The development process for any game will unfortunately always be bogged down with cuts and redesigns, and it would seem that Death Stranding is no exception to this rule. Thanks to some older documentation from Death Stranding's development, it can be seen that one aspect of the game's unique multiplayer was altered before release.
Hideo Kojima shared a tweet on Tuesday that showed the original concept for how the social features of Death Stranding might have worked in an early build of the game. While it is hard to say if the original concept would have been better in practice than what Kojima Productions eventually went with or not, the echoes of this early concept can still be seen in game.
The mechanic in question involves the building of roads and the paths that players pave into the ground as they continue to travel from one end of America to the other. According to Kojima's tweet, when enough players walked along the same path, it would eventually level out into a walking trail and eventually fully paved roads once enough people have cleared the way thoroughly. In the current game, the walking trails still exist, but the paved roads have to be communally built by players through multiplayer, as opposed to forming naturally as players continue to walk over paths on their way to make deliveries.
Another interesting change between the game that eventually launched and this early concept is the use of the term "Sticks" for the item that Sam uses to protect himself. This is likely an early concept for the Strands that Sam is able to use in game to tie up Mules and Demens when taking a stealth approach into combat. It's likely that the concept was eventually changed in order to fit better with the themes of connecting that has become the through-line of Death Stranding's gameplay, online features, and marketing strategy.
From these early documents, it would seem that not much had changed between early concepts to the full release version of Death Stranding that released in November, and even what did get cut seems to have evolved over the process of development. Considering the unpredictable nature of players and how they might start paving their own roads through unconventional paths, it's likely that the roads being changed to build in set locations was a result of necessity rather than convenience. Although, the revelation of these altered mechanics does beg the question of what else could have been in the game, but was cut before release?
Death Stranding is available now for PS4, with a PC release set for Summer 2020
Source: Twitter (via Gaming Bolt)