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It’s safe to say that Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater is going to be a pretty faithful remake. Hideo Kojima’s masterpiece is fully revamped in Unreal Engine 5, sporting photorealistic visuals and tweaked gameplay elements. But in the quest to not ruin or interfere with Kojima’s work, there may be elements that start feeling, as Konami references in their latest Production Hotline, ‘outdated’.
One such mechanic is the original game’s gated level design, which sees players traverse through a series of individual areas, sewn together with loading screens. Of course, on the PS2, this makes a lot of sense, given the restrictions in power the developers were dealing with. However, with the power of the Xbox Series, PS5 and even PS5 Pro, this is no longer needed.
When people ask, ‘couldn’t they have improved this? Wouldn’t it have been better as a more modern stealth game, with much more freedom to it?’ I do understand where they are coming from.”
Metal Gear series manager, Jiro Oishi
Konami, then, faces a choice… do they change this in the hope of addressing some early feedback (They cited that a common complaint from the preview was around these gated areas) and be seen as ‘interfering’ with Kojima’s masterpiece, or do they not touch it, accepting it’s slightly dated?
Metal Gear series manager, Jiro Oishi shed light on the challenge and provided justification as to why it will remain in the game. “I would just mention a few things about this being ‘too faithful’ and the thought process behind that,” he said. “When people ask, ‘couldn’t they have improved this? Wouldn’t it have been better as a more modern stealth game, with much more freedom to it?’ I do understand where they are coming from.”
He continued: “In the early stages of development, that was actually our most hotly debated issue. But at the end of the day, well, we saw discussion about ‘how it feels outdated to go into an area and nothing you do affects other areas’ but that’s just how the game was designed. The rhythm and the shifting pace of gameplay flows from that choice. If we had done anything to change that overarching design, it would have changed the game entirely.”
There’s no concrete release date for Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, but Konami is keeping fans updated through their, actually very good, Production Hotline – the latest episode we have linked here in this article.
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