Presumably typing with his bloodshot eyes still glued to a number on his desktop monitor, Hideo Kojima announced that the percentage of Death Stranding 2 players who have kept portering bridges, or whatever it is they're doing in this game, after finishing the game itself has risen from a mere 79.5% to a staggering 79.6%.
That's "according to the latest data from yesterday," Kojima said in his latest post-game percentage post (PPP, we in the business call it). The director also asked players to "make the most of the Obon summer holiday and play to your heart’s content," referring to Japan's Obon festival, one of its major holiday seasons (not to be confused with Golden Week).
He said this on his English Twitter account, so I'm unsure how much mileage this Japanese holiday will get with the global Death Stranding 2 player base. Sorry boss, can't come in. Kojima says we've got the day off. Gotta make the most of it!
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Obviously, a game director asking players to play his game and punch up its numbers is no grand surprise. But Kojima's sheer doggedness in tracking this figure, and his fixation on this statistic in particular, is interesting.
It was only last week that Kojima reported an incredible rise from 79% post-game play to 79.5%, correcting himself with a quick flex. Clearly, this means a lot to him. And clearly, he would love to hit a clean 80%. As someone who spends too much of my work day watching numbers and hoping they will go up, I do sympathize. I like to imagine Kojima's coworkers periodically seeing him fist-pump the air in his office every time the number rises by another 0.1%.
Joking aside, I do think post-game play is an especially fascinating metric for a game like Death Stranding 2, which lacks many of the replay value hooks seen in, shall we say, more ordinary games. You aren't going to start New Game+ and start leveling some MacGuffin to 200 while previously unseen bosses dramatically saunter in from off stage. There isn't even a true New Game+. This ain't Nier: Automata or Armored Core 6. No, there's just more of this – a world to see and touch, and things to deliver.
The fact that so many Death Stranding 2 players have chosen to press on regardless, perhaps polishing off trophies or checklists or just personal goals, is a testament to the core gameplay loop. Player dropoff will inevitably come, but the long tail on Death Stranding 2's world is impressive. How Long To Beat puts the main story at 34 hours and change, while a true completionist run could take you over 100, so there's clearly plenty to find hidden in nooks and crannies.
Hideo Kojima clears up "misunderstanding" around Death Stranding 2, says cutscenes "are not pre-rendered, they're basically all in real-time" and that's been the case since Metal Gear Solid.
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