Hideo Kojimas has revealed that Death Stranding 2's plot was rewritten because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which hit a bit too close to home after the original Death Stranding.
Last night, Hideo Kojima took to The Game Awards stage in order to reveal Death Stranding 2 to the world, under the working title of DS2. The trailer showed several returning characters from the first game, including Lou, Sam, and Fragile, as well as giving us a glimpse at several new things like a unicycle, a massive ship, and a strange red coffin leaking oil. You know, typical Kojima stuff.
After revealing the trailer at The Game Awards, Hideo Kojima took to the stage to say a few words about the game. Alongside teasing that there are several secrets for fans of the first game to find in the trailer, Kojima also revealed that he actually had the whole of Death Stranding 2's story written before the pandemic hit in 2020, but then chose to rewrote it in the years after.
Kojima said, "Well, I had the story written before the pandemic, but after experiencing the pandemic I just rewrote the whole thing, the story from scratch. I also didn't want to predict any more future, so I rewrote it". Considering Death Stranding's themes of connection and a world torn apart, it's probably not too surprising to learn that Kojima wanted to change things around a bit after the world came even a little bit close to how it's presented in the first game.
This does tell us a few interesting things about Death Stranding 2's development cycle, though. Although it doesn't outright say that work on the game was happening at the start of 2020, it does confirm that Kojima had at least written out an outline of the story for the sequel. Thanks to Norman Reedus, we've known for some time now that a sequel to Death Stranding 2 has been in the works for some time, but now we've got an even better idea of when work actually began.