During testing, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach was proving to be too good, spurring on director Hideo Kojima to make some changes to the game.
That's according to musician Yoann Lemoine (Woodkid), who has collaborated with Kojima Productions on the upcoming sequel's soundtrack, in a recent interview with Rolling Stone.
"There’s a key moment where we had a discussion, probably halfway [through] when we were doing the game, where he came to me and he said, 'We have a problem'," Lemoine says.
Kojima was apparently disappointed to learn that playtesters were enjoying the game more than he wanted. "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."
Woodkid continues, explaining that, as a result, Kojima "changed stuff in the script and the way some crucial stuff [happens] in the game", because he was afraid it wasn't "polarising enough and not triggering enough emotions".
Kojima told Woodkid he wanted DS2 to be anything but mainstream. "If everyone likes it, it means it’s mainstream. It means it’s conventional. It means it’s already pre-digested for people to like it. And I don’t want that. I want people to end up liking things they didn’t like when they first encountered it, because that’s where you really end up loving something."
All this tracks with an interview from earlier in the year, in which Kojima said much the same about not wanting to please everyone.