METAL GEAR SOLID 2 Was Never an AI Story and Hideo Kojima Explains Why

For years, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty has been held up as a prophetic video game about artificial intelligence running amok. It’s an interpretation that’s followed the game for more than two decades, especially as real-world tech continues to creep closer to the unsettling ideas Kojima Productions explored back in 2001. But according to Hideo Kojima, that reading misses the point.

In a recent interview with Wired Japan, Kojima pushed back on the idea that Metal Gear Solid 2 was meant to be an AI-centric story. For him, the game was always about something broader and far more human.

"MGS2 is often mistaken for a story about AI, but it's about digital society," Kojima said in an interview with Wired Japan. "MGS1 was about DNA. That's when I thought about the shift from analog to digital. In digital society, everything is preserved.

“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."

While the game famously features powerful systems manipulating information and perception, Kojima explains that the real focus wasn’t sentient machines. It was the consequences of living in a world where data never disappears and information flows endlessly, shaping behavior, memory, and identity.

He doubled down on that idea, clarifying that the sequel "wasn't about AI" at all. Instead, it was about "interweaving digital data gaining a will of its own."

In hindsight, that concept feels uncomfortably close to the reality we’re living in now, where algorithms, archives, and social platforms influence how people think and interact every day.

Kojima admits that seeing those ideas play out hasn’t been especially satisfying. "24 years have passed," he added. "It has become somewhat of a reality. I didn't predict it. [It's] rather a future I didn't desire, but unfortunately we're heading there."

That reflection ties into his thoughts on modern generative AI, a topic he’s also weighed in on recently. While he’s cautious about where the technology could lead creatively, he doesn’t see it as an enemy.

Kojima says he views AI "as more of a friend" when used in the right way, specifically as a tool to streamline production rather than replace imagination. "I'd like AI to handle the tedious tasks that would lower cost and cut down on time," he said.

Metal Gear Solid 2 isn’t really a warning about rogue machines, it’s more like a meditation on permanence, noise, and the overwhelming flood of information that defines modern digital life.