Hideo Kojima's Death Stranding was one of the biggest surprises at E3 2016, but keeping the game under wraps has apparently taken its toll on the game developer and the rest of Kojima Productions.

In the most recent episode of HideoTube on the video game development studio's YouTube channel, Kojima shared how worried they were that details about the Norman Reedus-starrer would be leaked. He had worked with the Walking Dead actor just last March for the game's teaser and could not even tell Low Roar, the band responsible for the track that accompanied the Death Stranding teaser, what the game their music will be on was about.

Leaks before E3 conferences are commonplace nowadays, thanks (or no thanks?) to the internet. No matter how many precautions even the big companies make, something always ends up online, ready to be gobbled up by eager fans.

Kojima shared that at least half of the stuff he's worked on had been leaked so he wanted the announcement for his next game to be a surprise, letting no more than five people at Sony know the details.

That's a fairly small circle of people guarding Kojima Productions' big secret but still the team was highly concerned, their worries exacerbated by the fact that titles were getting leaked left and right.

"We were nervous and could barely sleep," Kojima said, saying they were anxious if their game would be the next to be revealed.

Keeping their own secret was hard for Kojima as well because he's quite active on Twitter. He had to keep his own secret so he couldn't even share that he was headed for E3 2016. Additionally, he deliberately stayed at a hotel in Los Angeles that is far from the event, hoping he wouldn't be spotted. Of course he was and fans couldn't help themselves and asked for photos. Unfortunately for them, Kojima needed to be as low-key as possible so he had to decline.

The day before the big reveal, the game developer even went so far as to wait in a different area backstage during rehearsal and go to a separate bathroom. Kojima certainly did go through a lot to protect Kojima Productions' big secret and it all paid off. When Death Stranding was finally revealed, people were bewildered.

There's not a lot to go on to determine what the video game is actually about but hawk-eyed fans have speculated, based from the mathematical equations apparently etched on the dog tags Reedus was wearing in the promotional image for Death Stranding, that the plot could involve black holes and alternate universes.

Watch the fourth HideoTube episode below!