Konami has been making a strong comeback lately, and much of the attention the world is paying to the Japanese publisher is coming to the upcoming Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater. I’ve played Konami’s other modern triple-A game, Silent Hill 2, which was a huge success, and I had a brief but enjoyable time with Metal Gear Solid Delta, which didn’t disappoint.
While there’s no confirmed release date yet, the original game’s 20th anniversary will be November 17so fans can only hope that Delta will be in their hands by then. In anticipation of the release, Konami invited me to play 90 minutes of Snake Eater RemakeSo far, it looks like a faithful remake of Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater, even with a more Hollywood twist that’s designed to please audiences old and new.
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My preview starts with the grand opening of Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater and ends shortly after you meet the boss. In this part, Snake is baptized as Naked Snake and he travels into the Soviet Union in a more epic way than before to try to complete the Virtues’ mission.
Virtual missions? You guessed it, this – and lots of other hilarious, often weird dialogue – is still there. Naked Snake is still David Hayter. Major Tom, the bosses, and the Para-Medic have all been given a literal facelift, and the jungle that Snake first enters also got a facelift at the start of my preview. It’s all very cinematic and very pleasing to the eye, and of course, no longer covered in the brown-green filter that seemed to be rampant in the early 2000s. In the Silent Hill 2 remake, Konami lets you apply a 90s filter (if you like) to help evoke that nostalgia. I didn’t see the option to do that in Delta, but that doesn’t mean it won’t definitely be there at launch.
With both new and old fans in mind, the game offers a traditional control scheme for those who want it, along with an all-new control system that feels a little more intuitive to use. Unlike Silent Hill 2, Metal Gear Solid: Delta doesn’t get such a comprehensive update–at least not in the small portion I played with it.
Speaking to Noriaki Okamura via a translator, I asked how important it was for the team to retain the original game’s many hilarious Easter eggs. Think about how if you change the system clock, The End will die of old age, or trick The Fear into eating expired food, and so on.
Okamura said that “there will be no changes to the features,” explaining that the developer has tried to keep the game as faithful to the original as possible.
The scenery alone feels the same as the original game, but with a new coat of color and trees with climbable vines. Actually
When asked why the developer chose to remake all the games in the Snake Eater series (why not just start with the first game?), Okamura said: “We found that a lot of the younger generation don’t know the Metal Gear series at all. These games are very important to us, and we want them to be able to play them. [Delta]We don’t want the flame to die out, and we don’t want the Metal Gear Solid franchise to disappear.
“It’s also a game that’s very well loved and highly regarded. I think that’s also a big factor in attracting new fans because it’s such a great game. Personally, if someone – a friend or a young person – came and asked me which Metal Gear Solid game they should start with… there are so many. I would definitely recommend [Snake Eater] Personally, I prefer this book because it is the first in a series that is arranged chronologically.”
If Konami wants to attract a whole new audience, then giving Snake Eater a new lease of life while retaining the elements that made it so popular in the first place is undoubtedly the right move. Starting with the origins of the story, rather than the first game in the series…it turns out to be a brilliant move.
All in all, Metal Gear Delta: Snake Eater is doing pretty well so far. I can’t wait to see more. If the rest of the game is as faithful and high-quality as the short mission I played, Konami may have a slam dunk for fans of the spy action series and Metal Gear newbies alike.
Metal Gear Delta: Snake Eater was played on PS5. The game will be released on PS5, Xbox, and PC via Steam, though a release date has yet to be announced.