How far is too far for a remake – and how safe is too safe? For Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, a sumptuous Unreal…
How far is too far for a remake – and how safe is too safe? For Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, a sumptuous Unreal Engine 5 remake of a 2004 classic, finding a winning answer to this question has led to a great many careful choices at Konami. The combat and camera are updated, the visuals are starkly improved, and yet the original’s DNA still courses through the experience. Perhaps even more-so than another ongoing remake effort – Silent Hill 2, as handled by Bloober team – this project rather prefers a more literal approach. In playing its opening 90 minutes, covering the Virtuous Mission prologue, it’s also clear that a deep respect for Hideo Kojima’s 2004 original steers Delta towards a stricter 1:1 recreation than you might expect.
Let’s start with the cut-scenes. Every shot during Delta’s opening sequence is a perfect match for the PlayStation 2 original’s, right down to the timing of each camera cut. It makes a clear statement of intent early on: a military plane courses through the night sky as the words « based on Metal Gear Solid 3 » flash across – which rings as an understatement in this case. The entire original team is credited en route, and everything is exactly as a long-term fan might remember. Between Snake lifting his cigar as he broods in the plane’s hangar, to the way a bullet shell – stylishly – rolls past the foreground during a later showdown with Revolver Ocelot, it all translates exactly.
UE5 does the heavy lifting now, of course, where Konami takes point in updating its character models and environments – lighting and shading them within a new renderer. Still, all of this wraps around an existing framework of crash zooms and whip-pans set in place by Kojima’s team 20 years ago. The game’s producer, Noriaki Okamura, explains his team’s approach:
« From the start it was not our intention to do the same as other remake titles, where [they] add in or change the core gameplay. Our goal was to recreate it as-is, so people can keep its nostalgic essence, and play it as they remember », he explains. « And so, the main focus for what we did change for the remake was to update the graphics and also modernise some of the controls. »
« Regarding the cut-scenes we are actually using the original camera and cut-scene data. We re-did the visuals on top of this. What we did do from scratch were the facial animations, because now that we updated the character models the original animation didn’t match up with the lip sync. »
The updated character models are a marvel to see in motion, and it’s a relief that Delta’s added facial animations actually blend in well.
