Hideo Kojima says MGS2 was never about AI 'but rather a future I didn't desire' of data gaining a will of its own and 'unfortunately we're heading there'
Hideo Kojima has chosen to cap-off 2025 by doing an interview with Wired, as part of the publication's Tech Support series: where the great and the good answer quickfire questions submitted by the public. Much of it is stuff that any seasoned Kojima-liker will be familiar with, such as praising 2001: A Space Odyssey to the heavens, though it is nice to see his love for the original Super Mario Bros. remains so pure.
One question put to Kojima (timestamp) relates to Metal Gear Solid 2, saying that AI control in the world is "becoming a reality" and asking whether Kojima predicted this era. To sum up in a sentence, and obviously spoilers ahead, MGS2 takes a very weird turn in its second half, with 'reality' collapsing around the protagonist Raiden as the player sits through a series of monologues about digital control, junk data, and our inability to parse the bewildering amounts of information created by the modern world. And that's simplifying things.
"MGS2 is often mistaken for a story about AI, but it's about digital society," says Kojima. "MGS1 was about DNA. What isn't left in DNA are memes. That's when I thought about the shift from analog to digital."
Kojima is here referencing memes as defined by the biologist Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene, a book that's a massive influence on early MGS, rather than specifically internet memes. The concept is an idea or behavior that spreads by imitation from person to person, and indeed also has this aspect of virality to it: something almost self-propagating and alive.
"In digital, everything remains," continues Kojima. "Like social media today. Even graffiti remains without deteriorating. The internet connects everything. And opinions are exchanged directly everywhere. MGS2 explored what human life would become then.
"It wasn't about AI, but interweaving digital data gaining a will of its own. That was the story. So, well…. 24 years have passed. It has become somewhat of a reality. I didn't predict it, but rather a future I didn't desire, but unfortunately we're heading there."
Unusually for him, I almost think Kojima's being a little modest here. MGS2 doesn't predict AI in quite the sense that the question suggests, but many of MGS2's big themes are in-step with issues we face around AI: aspects of social control, of how information is curated and presented, of how it is accessed or otherwise.
MGS2 didn't predict AI churning out Disney slop and resurrecting beloved performers in zombie routines, but it did recognise that big data would be a big problem for social cohesion and in particular focused on the idea of misinformation. We've all seen that in action. Kojima's observation that "even graffiti remains" has a lot underlying it.