It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost 20 years since the release of Metal Gear Solid 2, and even at its age, we learn something new about it still. This time around. the game’s director, Hideo Kojima, confirmed that he originally wanted Hans Zimmer as composer for the game. However due to the production budget they couldn’t afford him, and instead went with fellow Hollywood composer Harry Gregson-Williams instead.

In an interview with Game Developer talking about the iconic soundtrack to the sequel of 1998’s Metal Gear Solid, producer Rika Muranaka said Kojima and Konami initially wanted to tap Zimmer to produce the score for the highly anticipated new adventure starring Solid Snake. Unfortunately the composer declined, and so they approached Harry Gregson-Williams as a second choice and the rest was history.

We went to Media Ventures (now known as Remote Control Productions), which is Hans Zimmer’s studio. We originally wanted to get Hans Zimmer, but he was like ‘No, I can’t do it for that kind of money’–he’s so expensive, it’s ridiculous. So Hideo asked me to try and get in touch with Harry, because Harry was working for Hans Zimmer too in that studio at that time. At that time, he was still an upcoming composer, but he had done Enemy of the State, so a lot of people had started to notice him.

While the Metal Gear Solid series would become one of the best-selling video game franchises in history, Hideo Kojima would eventually depart from Konami following completion of his final MGS entry in Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain. The legendary video game developer now has a new studio in KojimaProductions, and is currently ready to release a new version of his first non-Konami related IP in Death Stranding: Director’s Cut — which is coming out this Friday September 24 and you can view the final pre-release trailer here.

Source: Game Developer