Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is an excellent port on PC for the most part, with minor issues that should be ironed out with a few patches. It has support for ultrawide monitors, but the implementation is limited to gameplay with black bars in cutscenes.
Thankfully, Lyall from the PC modding community has put out a patch for Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, which addresses the ultrawide limitation.
Fix the Death Stranding 2 Ultrawide Cutscenes Issue
The patch from Lyall expands aspect ratio support and removes cutscene pillarboxing if you’re playing in ultrawide.
Here is how you can install it:
- Make sure Death Stranding 2 isn’t running on Steam.
- Head over to the following Codeberg link and download the latest patch file by clicking DeathStranding2Fix_0.0.2.zip (or whatever version is latest) under Downloads.
- Head over to where Death Stranding 2 is installed and extract the zip file (using WinRAR or 7zip). The following is the generic Steam installation path:
steamapps\common\DEATH STRANDING 2 - ON THE BEACH
That’s all you need to do, and the next time you launch Death Stranding 2, black bars (letterboxing and pillarboxing) will be removed from the game’s cutscenes. Here is a screenshot of the patch in action, provided by Lyall, with a cutscene running at 32:9.
As you can see, pillarboxing has been removed entirely from the presentation, providing a perfect ultrawide experience.
Here are the full features of the patch as of version 0.2:
- Adjust gameplay FOV.
- Support for any aspect ratio.
- Disable cutscene pillarboxing.
- Constrain gameplay HUD to 16:9.
You can enable and disable any of these features by editing the DeathStranding2Fix.ini configuration file using any text editor like Notepad or Notepad++.
If, for whatever reason, you want to disable the entire patch or any specific feature, you can either delete the patch files or set the feature’s value to false in the configuration file.
All credits go to Lyall for creating and testing the patch. Their contributions are incredibly helpful for PC gamers, and you can learn about their work on their Patreon. There is a chance that Lyall will update this patch with new potential features to keep an eye on the releases page.
I don’t think Nixxes or Kojima Productions will actually update the title to remove the pillarboxing because of the intentional framing of the cutscenes, which is why this is the best bet for now. That said, features like FOV adjustment are something I’d love to see added officially as well. Nixxes has already released a Hotfix to address pressing technical issues, and given their history with PlayStation PC ports, I expect to see more issues resolved in no time with continued support for a while.
