It’s an exciting time for Metal Gear Solid fans such as myself. We’re not only about to get a remake of one of the best MGS games of all time, but also a new take on the classic stealth gameplay that made it so memorable. Earlier this month, I and several other journalists were invited to a Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater event to get some lengthy time in with the game and to check out the super cool installation at NYC’s Lightbox studio that housed a recreation of the iconic flower bed of the game’s final showdown. Along with Michael McWhertor of Polygon and Destin Legarie of The Destin Channel, I got to chat with Delta’s producers, Noriaki Okamura and Yuji Korekado.
What follows is a transcript of our roundtable conversation, with some slight edits for brevity and clarity. Konami provided a translator for our interview.
Michael McWhertor, Polygon: There’s been a lot of remakes in recent years, especially at Konami, and I wondered when you started working on this project how much you wanted to do this as a reinterpretation, or as a straight remake. Did you wanna add to it? Did you want to make Metal Gear Solid 3 through the lens of 2025? What was that approach like? Was it a straight remake or something else?
Noriaki Okamura, Producer, Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater: This is something we contemplated at the very beginning when we were starting this project: What would be the best way to do a remake of MGS3? And in those conversations what we ultimately decided on for Delta is [that] the concept of Delta is to be able to have new Metal Gear fans, new Metal Gear players to experience the original as is, as much as possible. Obviously we did the modernization that we need to so that it will be more fluid and more accepting to modern gamers and how they play games but in order for us to respect what was originally great about the game, we wanted to keep it as is as much as possible.
Allowing a different kind of [camera] angle, different kind of play style changes the thrill, the nervousness of needing to hide.
Destin Legarie, The Destin Channel: You’ve had a few preview sessions and you’ve gotten some feedback online. What changes have you been able to implement based on that online feedback today?
Yuji Korekado, Creative Producer, Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater: So one of the things we did is that, after we announced that we’re gonna do a remake, obviously there were a lot of reactions from a lot of Metal Gear fans and one of the things that really stood out to us is some of the additional modes that were, you know, removed, and because this game has been re-released so many times, and so some of them were they really wanted Snake Versus Monkey back, or, like, the Secret Theater videos back. After we we saw that there’s so much demand for it we decided, OK, what can we do to make those modes come back and what kind of way would be best to bring them back? So we did look into that kind of feedback.
Destin Legarie: Specifically, I’ve seen a lot of feedback about some of the facial animations. Has that feedback been taken to heart?
Yuji Korekado: Yes, we did get that kind of feedback. We heard them loud and clear and especially after we released some of the earlier trailers, that’s definitely something that was pointed out to us and like I said, we want to make sure the experience that we provide in the remake is the same kind of experience that the people who played the original experience had. We wanna make sure that wow factor is still there, so after that we definitely wanted to make sure that the quality is on par to what a Metal Gear game needs to be.
© Screenshot: Konami / Claire Jackson / Kotaku
Claire Jackson, Kotaku: What was it like balancing modern stealth mechanics with the stealth challenges of the original game?
Yuji Korekado: One of the things we did for Delta is to provide two types of what we call “Play Styles.” We have the Legacy Style which you can play kind of with a similar camera and controls as the original, and the new style you can play with more modern controls and a third-person camera setting. And when we allowed that new type of play style, we had to make some adjustments, some rebalancing because the way that you can now see the map changes how you need to hide and what you can see and what you can look out for. So one of the things we changed was the character animation, character motions and also the reactions and the responses of of some of the NPCs, the AI as well, and we needed to do that because allowing a different kind of angle, different kind of play style changes the thrill, the nervousness of needing to hide. So this is something that we had to go back and do a lot of testing with, utilizing modern technology to make it feel [like] that same nervousness as you were playing in the original style, but with a new modern control and camera.
Destin Legarie: Do you feel that modernization might make it too easy? Because I remember when [the GameCube remake of Metal Gear Solid, The Twin Snakes came out, a lot of the criticism was that having that extra perspective made gameplay easier and the game easy.
Yuji Korekado: To simply put it, yes, we knew this would happen, obviously. So, we had to do a lot of rebalancing between when you’re playing the Legacy Style versus the New Style, we had to make sure that the difficulty level would still match whatever playstyle you’re playing with and not make things too easy or too difficult.
The way that [Metal Gear Solid 3] was built originally was already perfect to begin with.
Claire Jackson: Does the team have a preference between the original, overhead camera or or the third person one?
Yuji Korekado: So, for [me] personally, [I love] both. Obviously modern players are more used to the third person camera and you know, specific types of controls. So for [new players] we want them to play with New Style first and because we think that this is the best way for them to get immersed into Metal Gear’s world in that way that they’re more used to. And once they cleared the game it will be fun for them to go back and replay the game in Legacy Style and see, “oh my goodness, there’s a whole new way of playing this game that I didn’t even know about,” so we would love for them to enjoy both Play Styles.
Michael McWhertor: I’m wondering if any technical issues came up developing certain aspects of the game? And I’m specifically thinking about how easy it was on the PlayStation 2 to, say, change the date, on your PlayStation 2 [to defeat the sniper boss, The End], whereas now on a PlayStation 5 or an Xbox Series X or a PC, it’s, it’s more difficult to change the date on your system because it’s connected to the internet, and I’m wondering if you have a technical solution to that issue or if any other technical issues popped up?
Yuji Korekado: So just with how we were able to adapt [the game] to the consoles and platforms back then, we were able to do that for all the the supported platforms that [Delta] is going to come out on today, and you know there’s different features on different types of platforms and features that we wanted to incorporate as well. For instance, we like the [rumble] feedback on the [PS5’s DualSense]. These are the types of things that we did really look into to make sure that we do what we can to best adapt [the game] to modern consoles as much as possible. In terms of technical difficulties, we didn’t really have too much, yeah.
Destin Legarie: I know we’re here for Delta today, and we’re running low on time. I have so much that I want to ask but I would get in trouble if I didn’t ask about Metal Gear [Solid] 4. Is there any hope you can give for fans about MGS4 possibly being in Volume 2 [of the Master Collection] or is it being worked on in any capacity?
Noriaki Okamura: This is something that we’re always, always thinking about: What is our next move in terms of the Metal Gear series, and we are aware that a lot of fans really want MGS4 back because it’s currently not playable on any current hardware or platforms, and this is something we do want to address at some point, making sure that fans can have a chance to play it once again. Unfortunately we can’t give you any more details other than that, but yeah, hopefully in the future this is something we can do.
Claire Jackson: Were there any unique challenges or surprises when it came to preserving the cinematic flair of the original [Metal Gear Solid 3]?
© Screenshot: Konami / Claire Jackson / Kotaku
Yuji Korekado: So for the cutscenes, we had to remake everything: The character models, the level, the stages, we had to do it all from scratch. And when we did that, one of our concerns was that even though everything looks amazing, if we still kept the same facing, the same camera angles, would it still hold up? And so once everything was done and we decided to create all the cinematics using the same camera, using the same background music, voice acting, we were blown away because the way that [Metal Gear Solid 3] was built originally was already perfect to begin with and the the modern graphics just enhanced that to the fullest. So we were very surprised that, you know, even to this day the way it was originally made was, you know, [it] didn’t need to be retouched.
