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:
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