‘We didn’t want to mess with the original’ – Hands-on with Metal Gear Solid 3’s remake

“It’s exactly what you’d want it to be.”

Those were the thoughts, shared in unison between VGC and Giant Bomb’s Dan Ryckert after we locked eyes following 90 minutes with Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater.

The remake, which brings Hideo Kojima‘s seminal PS2 stealth title into 2024, aims to not only remake a classic but also revitalize a franchise that’s faced choppy water since its creator departed under murky c circumstances.

“This is one of my favorite titles as well, and since the game was already good, to begin with, we didn’t want to mess around the original creative direction of the game,” says  Noriaki Okamura, a Konami veteran who serves the remake’s producer.

“There are a lot of things that we didn’t feel necessary to change.”

Our preview consisted of the first 90 minutes of the game. Before starting we were asked to choose between a 30FPS quality mode which targeted a dynamic 4K resolution, and a performance mode which renders at 1080 and will dynamically scale higher.

We were also asked which of the previous Metal Gear Solid titles we liked best. While we were told by a Komami representative that the functionality was not present in the demo, that choice, much like its equivalent choice in the 2004 original, will have consequences.

The game’s opening, known as The Virtuous Mission, sees Naked Snake HALO jump into the USSR in order to recover a Soviet defector. Snake is behind enemy lines with a knife, a silenced tranquilizer, and his wits.

After an opening cutscene showing off the newly rendered characters, complete with credits for the original creative team, Kojima et al, Snake lands in the jungle.

The game is very graphically impressive from the second we got our hands on it. The jungle is far denser, and the increased complexity in geometry means that the very clearly defined limits of the level are less obvious.

There are two approaches that Konami could have taken here. Either they make what is essentially a shot-for-shot remake in terms of enemy placement, level size, sub-area size, and item positioning, or due to the greatly increased technical limitations, they could have made the opening level one continuous sequences, free of loading screens.

Currently, it seems like Konami has chosen the former, as players who’ve ran through this mission dozens of times will be in incredibly familiar territory. The big change, however, is in how the game plays.

“This is a 20-year-old game,” says Okamura. “So when we decided to bring to modern platforms, we didn’t want to make it feel like an old game. We did refine a lot of things to make sure that for those who didn’t play the original, it still feels like a game that came out in this day and age.”

The new control scheme is the biggest reflection of this modernization. The game now controls like Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain. Snake’s range of movement is much larger, the speed with which you’re able to switch through weapons and items is much faster, and as a whole, the game is far more enjoyable to play.

The original game was released just a few years before third-person action titles began to receive largely uniform control schemes, and as such it’s a difficult and clunky game to return to, but Metal Gear Solid Delta alleviates all of that.

The game begins with a warning that the game may contain content that is no longer considered culturally appropriate, similar to the one found as part of the Metal Gear Solid Master Collection. However, Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater doesn’t plan on shying away from some of the game’s outdated ideas.

“We are well aware that some of the expressions may have been outdated,” says Okamura. “We have a content warning, however, we left [the content] in out of respect of maintaining the original creator’s vision that he had for the game.

“That was an executive decision to leave it in. There are parts that have been modernized and players are vastly different than they were 20 years ago, so there are definitely tweaks, but in terms of story and plotline, we left them as is.”

While so far it’s a very faithful remake, the game has also invested in some excellent quality-of-life features. The camo mechanic is now incredibly streamlined and can be accessed in-game rather than stopping proceedings to hunt through a menu.

We played through the rest of the demo with ease (this is probably the 10th time we’ve played the Virtuous mission) and got our first look at the game’s coterie of villains. The Boss, The Pain, The Fear, The End, all rendered lovingly, and delightfully strange as always. The End’s eyes popping out of his skull has never looked better.

It’s just an incredibly nice feeling to be so excited about Metal Gear again. For nearly a decade, all the enthusiasm from fans has been solely attached to games that were getting older and older, and seemingly locked in a bitter divorce between creator and studio. Now, things feel so much brighter. Konami is referencing Kojima by name, in public. Kojima’s constantly posting about the series, there’s clearly still great love there.

And now, we have a Metal Gear Solid game to be excited about. Sure, it’s not a new entry, but if the rest of Delta is as good as the section we played, a Metal Gear Solid 6 becomes a far more reasonable conversation to have.

“The popularity fluctuates over time, we haven’t released anything in a while,” reflects Okamura.

“Our focus right now is to rebuild the creative team, we have some of the core members of the original team, but right our focus is making sure we can deliver the Metal Gear series in this day and age if that takes off, hopefully, we can do more with it.”

If Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater is a temperature check for the return of the franchise, then so far it’s doing an incredible job. It feels incredible to play, it looks excellent, and it retains all the campy nonsense that makes Metal Gear so beloved.

It’s like Konami sat down and said “What doesn’t hold up about MGS 3,” and laser-targeted those things while leaving the things that made it so unique alone. We couldn’t be more confident about Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater as a package, and we’re desperate to play more.

And what of the rest of the series? Does the success of this remake determine the future of the franchise? What of Portable Ops and Metal Gear Acid, two titles Okamura himself worked on?

He laughs fondly as we mention those titles, “Those games are my personal favorites too.”

“If there is a high demand for them, let us know if you want to see those games on modern hardware, but right now we’re doing things little by little,” he chuckles.

Let’s start with freeing MGS 4 from the PS3, perhaps?