Hideo Kojima's trip down memory lane has taken him to Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.
The game director has been doing a fair bit of reminiscing recently, revealing last week that Metal Gear Solid 3's The End fight was meant to take place across multiple areas. Now, the series director has spoken to Metal Gear Solid's core themes and concepts with the very Kojima-like reflection just below.
MGS2 was a wake-up call to the digital society, but MGS4 is about the digitalization of the battlefield. Drones, SOPs, personal identification of weapons, weapon laundering, etc. From "humint" to "sigint" to "osint. It is no longer science fiction. https://t.co/KWU8q8xHa4April 23, 2023
Whereas Metal Gear Solid 2 hinted at our digital future and society at large, Kojima says Metal Gear Solid 4 is all about the "digitalization of the battlefield." Kojima points to aspects like drones, personal identification on weapons, and namely weapon laundering as aspects that lean into this core concept for the sequel.
- 26 years on, developers discuss the massive impact Metal Gear Solid had on the industry: "This was going much further than all previous action games. And that was totally inspiring"
- Hideo Kojima says Death Stranding's themes of connection came about because "I thought I lost everything when I became alone nine years ago"
Somewhat predictably, these two tweets from Kojima have fans in the replies begging for a re-release of the classic Metal Gear Solid games. Of course, it's worth pointing out Kojima has zero control over the series now, since he departed Konami and left the rights to the series behind back in 2015.
Last year actually, a former Kojima Productions developer revealed Metal Gear Solid 4 could've come to Xbox 360, but it was simply too complicated to pull off. The developer dispelled the common notion that PlayStation had an exclusivity deal in place for the game and revealed the sequel could've come to platforms after all, if the entire porting process wasn't so downright complicated and time-consuming.
A Metal Gear Solid actor also revealed how they ended up in a Ford commercial, if you're curious about how one of the weirder crossovers in history came to be.
