Hideo Kojima made some changes to Death Stranding 2‘s story after getting too much positive feedback on the game. Hideo Kojima is one of the great gaming developers and is one of the few auteurs in the industry. He has managed to create extremely surreal and high-concept games that are commercially viable, which is somewhat astonishing given how strange some of his games can be. A big part of that is there’s a lot of trust in him and he proudly slaps his name all over his games. He’s involved in all facets of his games, including editing his own trailers to promote the game which are just as anticipated as the games themselves.
Death Stranding was certainly his most out there game to date with a very lore-dense world that can be a bit daunting at first. Not only that, but the gameplay revolves around walking, climbing, and delivering packages, which was a huge change from the action-heavy Metal Gear Solid V, which was the last game he made before taking on this new IP. It was pretty divisive with some feeling like the gameplay was boring and clunky, while others were totally enamored by it. However, Death Stranding 2 looks like a far more action-packed game that may improve upon a lot of the things that detesters criticized the first game for.
Death Stranding 2 Was Changed After Hideo Kojima Was Put Off By Positive Feedback
However, that’s not Hideo Kojima’s ultimate goal. He isn’t out here trying to appease everyone. Instead, Death Stranding 2 is still aiming to retain a polarizing quality. Hideo Kojima recently noted that he wanted more people to dislike Death Stranding 2, as he finds the idea of a more polarizing game better as it opens up discussion and may create a more interesting legacy. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Hideo Kojima collaborator and musician Yoann Lemoine AKA Woodkid revealed that Kojima went out of his way to rewrite the script for Death Stranding 2 and make changes to the game after receiving too much positive feedback from internal tests.
“There’s a key moment where we had a discussion, probably halfway [through] when we were doing the game, where he came to me and he said, ‘We have a problem,’ Lemoine said. “Then he said, ‘I’m going to be very honest, we have been testing the game with players and the results are too good. They like it too much. That means something is wrong; we have to change something.’ And he changed stuff in the script and the way some crucial stuff [happens] in the game because he thought his work was not polarizing and not triggering enough emotions. And he said, ‘If everyone likes it, it means it’s mainstream. 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.’ And that was really a lesson for me; not doing stuff to please people, but to make them shift a little bit and move them.”
Lemoine went on to say that he appreciates that Hideo Kojima doesn’t compromise his vision, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t receptive to feedback. Kojima does shape his games based on what others tell him, but it doesn’t mean he will bend the game into something that he doesn’t agree with in order to make it more commercial. Still, Norman Reedus has suggested that Death Stranding 2‘s story will be more digestible than the first game as he had an easier time understanding it.
What do you think of Kojima’s approach to Death Stranding 2? Let me know in the comments.
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