Kojima was very worried that Death Stranding would leak before E3, says he barely slept
Hideo Kojima even had to use a separate bathroom at E3 so no one would know he was there.
Kojima Productions has released the latest HideoTube episode, and this one focuses on E3. One major point of discussion in the video is how Hideo Kojima was very nervous that, like so many other things at E3, his new PlayStation 4 and PC game, Death Stranding, would leak.
In the video, Kojima remarks that E3 announcements always tend to leak, and his past games are no exception. But for Death Stranding, Kojima made a major effort to ensure everything stayed under wraps -- and you might be surprised to learn the lengths he went to.
"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," he said. "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 five people at Sony know about it. We kept it extremely secret. We absolutely didn't want this to be leaked."
Kojima even tried to hide the fact that he was visiting Los Angeles at all. He loves to tweet, but he did not tweet at all about his trip to Southern California for the event. He also stayed at a hotel away from downtown, in hopes that he could remain undetected.
Some people did see him, when he went out to dinner and to a viewing of Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn's new movie, "The Neon Demon." However, he declined to take pictures with fans over fears that they might show up online, leading people to make a link to his new game reveal.
"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."
Death Stranding was officially announced during Sony's E3 2016 briefing on Monday, June 13. But there was a rehearsal beforehand, and for this, Kojima said he snuck in through the backdoor so no one would notice.
When the day of the show arrived, he got to the venue four hours early and remained backstage until the game reveal so no one would know an announcement was coming.
"Even when going to the bathroom, I had to use a separate restroom," he said.
According to Kotaku, Kojima also did not tell the band Low Roar, who supplied the song "I'll Keep Coming" for the Death Stranding trailer, what the song was being used for. Kojima told the band it was for an unspecified PlayStation game, and the group ultimately did not discover it was used in the Death Stranding trailer until the game's announcement.
Another interesting thing to note is that Kojima wore a t-shirt that said "D.S." on it during an appearance on Geoff Keighley's E3 show before the announcement. Kojima said he debated whether or not to even go on the show, but after agreeing to, he wanted to tease something. His "D.S." t-shirt didn't make a lot of sense then, but it definitely does now.
In other news about Death Stranding, Kojima said today at the Develop Conference that he thinks the game will be his best yet.
"So far, when I've been making games, I've had to give up on something or at least compromise on something in order to get things done," Kojima explained. "But this time, working with you [Mark Cerny] and you bringing the state-of-the-art technologies, we will get around that [usual problem].
"I'm very confident that we're working towards something completely new and that no one has seen so far. This will be my best work so far, I'm very confident about that."