Death Stranding’s Dev Team Were Baffled When Hideo Kojima First Explained The Game

Death Stranding is guaranteed to be a very strange game. Hideo Kojima’s games were already pretty out there when he was tied down to Metal Gear Solid, but now that the shackles are completely off? Watch out. Death Stranding co-star Mads Mikkelsen has admitted he has no idea what’s going on, and it turns out the guys actually making the game were confused as well.

During an E3 Coliseum Q&A session, Kojima described pitching Death Stranding to his development team. Apparently, he got a lot of blank stares.

“Every time I come up with a plan, I explain what I’m thinking for the game mechanics. The first people I explain this to is my team. For Death Stranding, I started explaining a year ago what I wanted to make. No one got it! Because I was trying to make something new and different. I personally think that if people are opposed to you, then you’re on the right track. That’s game making for me.”

Keep in mind, most of the Death Stranding team are guys who have worked with Kojima on Metal Gear Solid for years. These people are very well-acquainted with the man’s eccentricities, and even they had no idea what the hell he was talking about. Thankfully, Kojima finally got them to understand…

“When you’re trying to make something new, I need my team to get it. So, day in and day out I explain and I convey what I want to make. And while we move forward and make different experiments, little by little the team starts getting what I want to make. Right now, what I wanted to achieve is working. But my team, everyone is saying, ‘We’re geniuses!’ But I’m just like, ‘No, no, no, I thought of this!’”

According to Sony’s Shawn Layden, Death Stranding is actually playable in some form at this point – let’s hope players aren’t quite as baffled by the game as its own creators once were.

Death Stranding, which stars Mads Mikkelsen and The Walking Dead‘s Norman Reedus, hits PlayStation 4 sometime in 2018.