Hideo Kojima ordered devs to Make Death Stranding 2 more enjoyable so “more people finish the game”

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach’s lead level designer, Hiroaki Yoshiike, recently spoke in an interview and revealed that Hideo Kojima had one clear goal for Death Stranding 2: to make the game more enjoyable. This was a direct order from the director, as Kojima wanted players to enjoy the game all the way to the end.

It seems Kojima took player feedback for Death Stranding 1 seriously. Players complained that the game felt a bit slow-paced, while Kojima Productions worked hard to introduce an all-new world and concept to gamers.

Hiroaki’s new comments clear up some earlier confusion. Previously, co-composer Woodkid spoke to Rolling Stone, and it seemed like Kojima reacted to early playtests by trying to make the sequel intentionally weirder.

Kojima later pushed back on this interpretation, explaining that those early playtests actually helped him make the game more enjoyable for players. At the time, Kojima said, “Something that is not digestible stays in that person for a long time. So that’s what I meant by ‘I want to do things differently.’”

Kojima ordered developers to make Death Stranding 2 more enjoyable

This still left Kojima’s thinking a bit vague for Death Stranding players and critics. Now, Yoshiike, speaking to PC Gamer, has clarified earlier comments and presented a better picture of Kojima’s thought process. In the interview, Yoshiike said:

“Kojima wanted more people to enjoy the game all the way to the end. This was an order he gave us.”

He noted that Death Stranding 1 had to be “very elaborate” because Kojima Productions was creating a whole new world and concept from scratch. Players complained that the delivery system felt a bit drawn out at times, so the dev team took a lighter approach for the sequel.

Yoshiike continued:

“In the second game, we didn’t need to provide too many worldbuilding elements; we could make it less elaborate. Completionists can enjoy that depth, but for people who won’t necessarily care about it, we made sure they can follow the story through other supplemental elements within the game. That was one of the design choices we made.

This approach resonated with gamers, and Death Stranding 2 received widespread praise upon launch. Yoshiike further said, “We’ve gotten a lot of feedback that it’s much easier to recommend DS2 to people. We can see the metrics, and we've seen that people have progressed much further than they previously had. So that was just as we designed, I think.”

Buy Death Stranding 2: On The Beach at Amazon