Metal Gear Solid Delta Devs Want To Be “Respectful” In Their Remake, Even If Kojima Won’t Play It
An Old Snake for a New Generation.
Hideo Kojima, the creator of the Metal Gear Solid series, was very clear about where he stands on the remake of his 2004 masterpiece. Asked if he’d be playing Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, he laughed before telling fashion retailer Ssense, “No, I won’t.” After his very public ouster from Konami in 2015, it’s clear the creator has made his peace with leaving his career-defining series behind once and for all.
For the lead developers behind Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, Kojima’s matter-of-fact decision isn’t the cause for bad blood. In fact, they’re still hopeful that the man behind the original game will see and appreciate what they cooked up, regardless of whether he plays it himself.
“We are not sure what he would want to do, but we want to deliver this game whilst being very respectful of all the people that we previously worked with,” Delta producer Noriaki Okamura told Inverse. “We would love for [Kojima] to see it too.”
From the moment Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater was announced, there was a large elephant in the room. The remake comes nearly a decade after Kojima’s firing and the series being put on hold indefinitely. And Delta marks the first attempt to make a Metal Gear Solid game in the old style for the modern era.
Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater producer Noriaki Okamura (left) and creative producer Yuji Korekado (right).
For Okamura and Creative Producer Yuji Korekado, both of whom worked on the original 20 years ago, the goal was even bigger than filling Kojima’s shoes or satisfying the creatives they worked alongside decades ago. It’s about keeping the legacy of gaming’s premier stealth action series alive.
While Solid Snake appearing in games like Super Smash Bros. and Fortnite goes a long way in making the iconic espionage series recognizable, bringing back the series proper is the best way to keep younger audiences aware of why Metal Gear has the reputation it has.
“We noticed that in the current generation, there's more and more people who don't recognize the Metal Gear Solid series at all, seeing that this is a 20-year-old game now,” Okamura said. “So for us, the biggest opportunity here was reaching a new audience. And what we wanted to do was really show just how good this game was without changing too much.”
Changes like the ability to switch camouflage without pausing the game help bring Snake Eater into a new era.
That mission comes through loud and clear when playing Delta. The remake looks like a current-generation title thanks to the use of Unreal Engine 5. But everything from level design, animations, and even the voice acting remains completely untouched. Some new features, like the ability to change camouflage without opening the pause menu, are nice quality-of-life additions. And the new over-the-shoulder camera for aiming makes combat feel far more modern for younger players averse to old, more cumbersome mechanics. But for returning players, these changes will feel minimal in the grand scheme of things.
While this dogged faithfulness is disappointing to those who’ve played the original several times, Delta is a testament to how great that original game was and still is. Its stealth mechanics are satisfying as ever. Its Cold War melodrama is just as captivating and bewildering as it was two decades ago. Okamura said that its timelessness across the board surprised the Delta team.
“Just taking that original concept without even changing it, the game still had so many good points and a lot of charm to it and a lot of emotion,” Okamura said. “There wasn’t a lot to change. The game still had a lot to offer even though it was more than 20 years old.”
“Just taking that original concept without even changing it, the game still had so many good points and a lot of charm to it and a lot of emotion,” Okamura said. “There wasn’t a lot to change. The game still had a lot to offer even though it was more than 20 years old.”
Korekado hopes new players who grow accustomed to the modern conveniences Delta provides will give the game’s classic Legacy mode a try to better appreciate how the game has changed. It could serve as a history lesson of sorts.
“We've implemented the legacy style not just for the users who already like the game and have played it before,” Korekado told us. “We would also like new users to, once they've already played the game in new style, then go back and play it in legacy style, and be able to experience it in a slightly different way. We would love to see that.”
A lot is riding on Delta. Though the team is entirely focused on delivering a worthy remake of one of the best games of all time, they are open to making more games in the Metal Gear Solid universe. Okamura stopped short of saying whether he’d prefer another remake or a whole new entry in the saga.
Delta’s new over-the-shoulder camera feels much more modern than the old game’s first-person combat controls.
“We are always thinking about what we could do for the Metal Gear series,” Okamura said. “If the fans feel that they would like to see more, then we would like to consider lots of other things in the future.”
Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater is a valiant attempt to bring an aging but important series into the modern era. It may not be the ground-up remake that games like Resident Evil 2 and the Tomb Raider trilogy have received in recent years. But this faithful refresh is a stark reminder that the series hasn’t lost its sneaky step, even all this time later.
