There is very obviously a language barrier issue at play here that people are ignoring just to take what he said at face value. There’s zero chance that what he meant was the game was too good and that as a result he wanted to make it worse.

He almost certainly meant something more along the lines of the plot, or something to do with the game mechanics were too streamlined, or otherwise not challenging enough in some way.

The first Death Stranding was controversial in that its gameplay was very in depth and communicated a mindset at the expense of wider appeal. Go to any social media post about the game and look at all the people who A. Dismissed it for being “boring” due to the gameplay decisions that were made and B. The other group of people who believed it to be a masterpiece, who might not have were the game more streamlined and generic, for example if it was built like an MGS-lite with package delivery mechanics.

If you took a lot of the more “tedious” but immersive features out of DS1 and added more generic combat the game would likely have a wider appeal, but those of us that really liked the little touches that were seen as “tedium” would have liked it less and that’s the kind of thing he has to be referring to DS2. Like adding a bunch of action and making the deliveries trivial to complete might make more people dig the game but nobody would truly love it the way DS1 was loved by its fans. Kojima is definitely a fart-sniffer but he does deliver and he very obviously sees himself as an artist, not a corporate exec who wants to make the line go up the fastest.

Did they conduct this test in Japan? I ask since we could be losing something in translation. AFAIK, the Japanese people have a habit of being overly polite and not conveying strong emotion publicly, which might explain Kojima’s reaction. If he wanted to provoke a strong reaction in people, they’d say very different things.

“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.”

Is he saying people thought the script was too good? Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the first game… but never in a million years would I say that the script was good. Apparently Kojima is so allergic to good writing that he uses positive feedback as an excuse to self-sabotage.

Easy enough. Instead of using zealot fan boys as your play testers get some actual writers to look things over.

“Hey, David Hayter, you’ve written for some movies, what do you think of Kojima’s latest script?”

“He said it was shit…” And in Solid snake’s voice too. Ouch.

On a certain level I understand what he means, but there is something very funny about how fittingly pretentious this sounds for Kojima. Imagine making a good game that people love? The horror!

Hate to break it to you, Kojima: your career is where it is at becsuse your games are explicitly mainstream. Wow I knew he had his head up his own ass but I didn’t realize how far up there it was really lodged.

He’s not wrong, but i think appealing to yourself or at least a small niche just and foremost is the better goal to chase.

Everyone here talking trash about Kojima in here are the same people talking shit about how all media is dull and lifeless now.

Delivering packages is too good?