It’s always interesting revisiting a classic game decades later – whether dusting off some old hardware to play the original, jumping into a new remaster, or tucking into a full remake or reboot of an icon. The upcoming Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater falls into the latter category as a new, visually stunning reimagining of MGS 3. From the trailers and gameplay snippets Konami has already released, it seemed MGS Delta would be a deeply faithful remake. After playing the Virtuous Mission prologue, I can confirm that’s absolutely the case.
With shot-for-shot and word-for-word accuracy, the opening cutscenes and radio messages are recreated with a level of faithfulness I can’t recall seeing in a proper ground-up videogame remake. The same applies to the rest of the cutscenes during this opening mission. Of course, the big difference – which I’m sure the majority of you reading this will have already adjusted to – is the photorealistic character models. Seeing Snake, Major Zero, The Boss, and co. rendered in painstaking detail is probably the biggest allowance of creative license in Metal Gear Solid Delta, and I think the depiction of the original stealth game’s cast is brilliant.
Gameplay-wise, the environment around you is of course enhanced to a huge degree and looks incredibly lifelike. Reflections glisten off of the swamp section in the opening minutes. You can make out the individual teeth and body ridges of the crocs circling it. Individual leaves and blades of long grass sway in a gentle breeze.
Once again though, it’s ultra-faithful to the original, with the positioning of trees, barrels, and grass patches all reflecting the layout of Metal Gear Solid 3. Judging by what I played in this prologue, missions are also still broken up into small areas separated by brief fades to black. Most remakes will have probably looked to make them into one seamless open area for the sake of modernity, but it’s just another example of Konami being – and say it with me now, folks – faithful to Hideo Kojima’s classic. I’ve used that F-word a lot already, so why is Konami being so obsessive about Delta Snake Eater being like-for-like?
“In our opinion, the gameplay and then the storyline is perfect as it was. There’s no need to change it,” producer Noriaki Okamura tells me at a recent preview event in London.
There are some modernizations and fresh additions here, including a new controller scheme that more closely aligns with what you see in current action games, plus a tighter third-person camera perspective. That said, the legacy camera and control options are still available in the settings menu.
This is to say that Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater is exactly what most MGS3 fans will want. It portrays the game in gorgeous detail and provides some handy modernizations for those who haven’t touched the original in a while, all while being stoically true to, well, pretty much everything.
However, it stands in stark contrast to another remake of a Konami classic that I also got to check out during the London event. As you’ll learn from my Silent Hill 2 remake preview, that project faithfully recreates cutscenes, locations, and characters while also exercising the freedom to adapt aspects or add entirely new ideas. Silent Hill 2 is another game with ‘perfect’ status for many, yet Bloober’s remake finds space to innovate and build on Team Silent’s foundations.
MGS 3 remake is a fun nostalgia trip with impressive visuals and stealth gameplay that still holds up to this day. But, on reflection, I wish there was even a small splash of innovation present – something that would truly surprise me. Maybe the remake strays from the original path further in, but from what I’ve seen and heard, I doubt it.
I’m interested to see how these two remakes of iconic Konami games are received – one that prides itself on fervent faithfulness, and another that massively respects the source material while also riffing on what made it great. All you need to know for now about Metal Gear Solid Delta is that it’ll be the new best way to enjoy one of the greatest action games of all time. Just don’t expect any big surprises.