While Death Stranding 2 is now just days away, it turns out making the sequel was “the most difficult challenge” of Hideo Kojima’s career for a litany of reasons.
The world was very different in 2019 when the first Death Stranding hit store shelves. It pre-dated the global pandemic and many other world-shaking events that we’ve since experienced.
Trying to follow up on the debut title from Kojima’s own studio was no easy task. Not only did it prove far more difficult as a result of the global climate, but the gaming icon himself faced personal hardships along the way too.
It got so bad, as Kojima told us in a group interview Dexerto attended, that he “almost gave up” on the project altogether.
Worlds apart when working on Death Stranding 2
“Death Stranding 2 is quite special,” Kojima said in the interview as part of his World Stranding Tour in Sydney, Australia.
“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.”
Not collaborating with actors face to face, at least not initially, was just one hurdle the team had to overcome. In some cases, it means not filming on Kojima’s own set in Tokyo, Japan, but rather a Sony-owned facility in Los Angeles instead. But of course, that was only one part of the problem.
“Staff were all remote,” as Kojima stressed. “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.”
One of the reasons Kojima is hosting this World Stranding Tour is to reconnect after years of toiling away amid the global pandemic.
Looking for the silver lining in it all, as many of us were during the difficult times, Kojima argued that in overcoming the issues, it made him and the team at Kojima Productions “a little stronger.
“We might experience something similar in the future, but once we’ve experienced it, we have the strength.”
When making Death Stranding 2, Kojima didn’t “feel like it was work.” Instead, he described it as a “mission.” It was his responsibility to “gather the team again” and get his world back on track.
“We had all these problems. I know everyone experienced it. But then finally, this is done. So it’s almost to a point where I gave up, but I came back. I felt like I reconnected again, within myself.”
