I put all of these things in. Even if I said to the staff, 'Please…

“To give them freedom. […] But when they ask, I start getting nitpicky. […] Like, "I would do it this way." […] I don't really want to do that.”

“I don't like playing myself, though. That happens a lot.”

“Yeah, I scanned myself the last time around. Not this time though. In the last game, I was the one that came out of the tar.”

“But I grew up watching Hitchcock and little surprises like that are fun, aren't they?”

For Death Stranding 2, Kojima had to turn down around half of the cameo requests from famous people: scanning each person in the studio took about fifteen minutes, and the team ran out of space on the project.