Kojima Productions’ Death Stranding was one of the highlights of Sony’s E3 presser even if the trailer was very much a “proof of concept”. Director Hideo Kojima, however, faced his fair share of stress in keeping the game under wraps on route to its reveal.
In the latest episode of HideoTube, Kojima discussed the road to E3 and how leaks inevitably occur. “So every single year, there are leaks before E3. No matter how careful we are, in this era, something always makes its way to internet. Up until this year, at least half of our stuff had been leaked. And this time around, it was supposed to be a surprise.
“So we didn’t let more than 5 people at Sony know about it. We kept it extremely secret. We absolutely didn’t want this to be leaked.”
In fact, Kojima didn’t even give the impression that he was in Los Angeles. Along with staying a hotel away from the expo, Kojima also didn’t tweet about his visit. There were times when people saw him though, especially when he went to watch Nicolas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon, and there was a worry that his pictures would show up online, thus leading to people speculating about his presence in the city.
“As E3 was getting close, many other titles were getting leaked,” he said. “And we were thinking, ‘How many could be left?’ We were nervous; could barely sleep.”
When rehearsal time happened, Kojima actually took a backdoor to avoid detection (cue Metal Gear Solid references) and when the show itself took place, he arrived at the venue early and stayed backstage. Heck, he even used a separate restroom from everyone else.
It’s fascinating to hear about the entire journey so check out the rest of the video below. Death Stranding is currently in development for PS4 and PC.