Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima is no stranger to using long cutscenes to help drive his stories forward, but the veteran game developer has revealed player data influenced how they were used in Death Stranding 2.

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots famously has the longest ever cutscene in a videogame, spanning a whopping 74 minutes. Fast forward to the recently released Death Stranding 2, and Kojima has opted for shorter non-playable elements that don’t lose any of the impact. So, why the change? In an interview with IndieWire, Kojima analysed the player data and found that a lot of players were skipping the cutscenes in the original Death Stranding. However, the length, and pace of the cutscenes was deliberate to help set the scene and draw the player into the world.

“DS1, there were a lot of long cutscenes, yes, because it was supposed to start slow, right, and to explain everything — it was slow — but I see a lot of people discontinuing watching the cutscenes from “DS1” by stats,” he said. “Because, for me, cutscenes are part of the game. Some people don’t even think about that, but I believe cutscenes are part of the game.

“So what I do is: I have these bunches of cutscenes, games, and events, and I lay them out and really change through the play-through — like, I change the length of the cutscene if the cutscene, I feel, is too long. The rhythm is very important. I check the rhythm of the game, and I kind of change everything. So maybe, you know, that’s one reason. I even change it after taking the motion after sessions with the actors, and I kind of adjust the balance of that rhythm, as I said, and I think it’s becoming better because of that.

Death Stranding 2 may still be hot off the press, but Hideo Kojima is still finding time to work on his next big project. The Kojima Productions boss revealed he’s still very much focused on Death Stranding 2, which released last month to rave reviews, however his next project Physint is at the ‘conceptual stage.’ “Well, I’m checking the data of the players all over the world — what kind of weapons they’re using, the routes they’re taking, all this data,” said Kojima, when asked about his current focus with Death Stranding 2. “And I also see these small bugs here and there, so I’m deciding where to fix and what to fix.

“I also am starting to work with the team on “OD” because that’s a new project, and also doing “Physint” all by myself because that’s at the conceptual stage. So I’m doing that. And also I have all these interviews every day, and also promotional — photo-shootings, things like that — so I don’t feel like I’ve finished the title, to be frank.”