After feedback that Death Stranding was 'too slow,' Kojima wanted more players to see Death Stranding 2 all the way through to the end
When Kojima Productions set out to develop Death Stranding 2, writer and director Hideo Kojima gave his team a clear goal: Keep people playing all the way through this time.
"Kojima wanted more people to enjoy the game all the way to the end. This was an order he provided," said lead level designer Hiroaki Yoshiike, in a recent interview with PC Gamer.
That directive might sound surprising if you saw a widely circulated quote about Death Stranding 2 last year from co-composer Woodkid. In an interview with Rolling Stone, the musician alleged that director Hideo Kojima changed the game based on playtesters liking it too much, striving to make it less conventional. It was a compelling quote out of context—the auteur, going against the grain! But in reality, as Kojima cleared up in December, he actually made the writing more explicit and "changed the game to make it more playable and fun" based on focus tests. He just didn't want it to be too "digestible," easily played and quickly forgotten.
Kojima did take feedback about the first game to heart, though, and his reaction wasn't to double down on making the sequel harder to like.
Yoshiike said that for Death Stranding, the developers needed to be "very elaborate" as they "introduced all the new concepts and what the world is like." But the player feedback was that the game "might've been a little bit slow."
"In the second game, we didn't need to provide too many worldbuilding elements, we could make it less elaborate. For completionists, they can enjoy it, but at the same time, people who don't necessarily care about it that much, we made sure they can follow the story through other supplemental elements within the game. That was one of the design choices that we made. We've gotten a lot of feedback that it's much easier to recommend DS2 to people. And we're able to see the metrics, and we saw that people progress much further than they previously had. So that was just as we designed, I think."
According to trophy data on PSNProfiles and Steam, fewer than half of players saw credits in the first Death Stranding. Stats vary by game version, with about 40% completing the original PS4 release, 34% finishing the PS5 Director's Cut and only 20% (likely double-dippers) reaching the end on Steam.
While the PC release of Death Stranding 2 is too fresh to offer a meaningful completion percentage, the 54,000 owners on PSNProfiles reflect the results that Yoshiike alluded to. More than 62% of players finished Death Stranding 2's final chapter.
Part of that higher completion percentage is likely due to how much more quickly you gain access to vehicles and other tools that make it quite easy to travel from place to place in Death Stranding 2, which some players felt made the game too easy. "We knew that there were some people, in DS1, who did enjoy the catharsis of making deliveries over treacherous terrain, which is the reason we included To the Wilder as a difficulty [in the PC release]," Yoshiike said.
Kojima Productions had more to say about To the Wilder's design, which you can read about here.
Death Stranding 2 stats: Level up each one
Death Stranding 2 APAS Enhancements: Porter Grades
Death Stranding 2 vehicles: All rides
Death Stranding 2 repair vehicles: Charged and ready
Death Stranding 2 fast travel: Skip the scenery
Death Stranding 2 Magellen evaluation: Short-changed