In a recent interview with Dexterto, Hideo Kojima has revealed that the upcoming Death Stranding 2 was the most difficult project in his entire career and got nearly cancelled due to the many difficulties he had faced while making the game during the pandemic. He stated:
“Death Stranding 2 is quite special; We had the pandemic, everyone experienced this. You weren’t able to meet people face to face. I had the problem of not even meeting actors. I had all the cast decided, but during the pandemic, I thought I couldn’t pull it off.”
Kojima added: “I became sick as well, I thought it was the end of the world. I’ve been creating games throughout my years, but Death Stranding 2 was the most difficult challenge yet.”
However, he said that in the end the entire experience of making Death Stranding 2 while pushing through the difficulties had made him and his team stronger in the long run.
“We might experience something similar in the future, but once we’ve experienced it, we have the strength.”
In other news of the highly anticipated Death Stranding 2, the game’s composer Yoann Lemoine, also known as Woodkid, has recently shared insights on the changes to creative directions of the game made by Kojima including altering key parts of the central story, because the playtesters though it was “too good”. He felt the game wasn’t “polarising and not triggering enough emotions,” which led Kojima to change the script along with several major elements of the story in Death Stranding 2.
“If everyone likes it, it means it’s mainstream,” Kojima reportedly told Woodkid. “It means it’s conventional. It means it’s already pre-digested for people to like it. And I don’t want that. I want people to end up liking things they didn’t like when they first encountered it, because that’s where you really end up loving something.”
It seems Kojima is approaching the game in the manner of a movie or any other forms of art, and it’ll be interesting to see how his unique directions turn out for the game when it arrives this month.
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is slated to be released on June 26, 2025.
