Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater is an unyieldingly faithful remake – but new controls have new consequences

How far is too far for a remake—and how safe is too safe? For Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, a lavish Unreal Engine 5 remake of a 2004 classic, finding a winning answer to that question has led to a host of careful choices at Konami. The combat and camera have been overhauled, the visuals vastly improved, and yet the DNA of the original still flows through the experience. Perhaps even more than another remake in progress—Silent Hill 2, as handled by the Bloober team—this project favors a more literal approach. Playing through the first 90 minutes, which cover the prologue to Virtuous Mission, it’s also clear that a deep respect for Hideo Kojima’s 2004 original steers Delta toward a stricter 1:1 recreation than one might expect.

Let’s start with the cutscenes. Every shot during Delta’s opening sequence is a perfect match for the PlayStation 2 originals, down to the timing of every camera cut. It makes a clear statement of intent early on: a military plane flies across the night sky as the words “based on Metal Gear Solid 3” flash by – which, in this case, is an understatement. The entire original team is credited along the way, and everything is exactly as a loyal fan would remember it. From Snake lifting his cigar while contemplating in the plane’s hangar, to the way a bullet casing stylishly rolls past the foreground during a later confrontation with Revolver Ocelot, it all translates precisely.

UE5, of course, is doing the heavy lifting now, with Konami leading the charge in updating its character models and environments, lighting and shadowing in a new renderer. Yet it’s all wrapped around an existing framework of crash zooms and whip pans that Kojima’s team established 20 years ago. The game’s producer Noriaki Okamura explains his team’s approach:

“From the beginning, our intention was not to do the same thing as other remakes, where[they]add or change the core gameplay. Our goal was to remake it the way it is, so that people can keep the nostalgic essence and play it the way they remember it,” he explains. “And so the main focus for what we changed for the remake was to update the graphics and also modernize some of the controls.”

“In terms of the cutscenes, we’re actually using the original camera and cutscene data. We redid the visuals. What we did do from scratch was the facial animations, because now that we’ve updated the character models, the original animation wasn’t matching the lip sync.”

The updated character models are a wonder to behold in motion, and it’s a relief to see Delta’s added facial animations actually blend in well. It’s a well-considered move by Okamura and his team, I think, considering that the simple lip-flap movements of the PS2 original – as effective as they were for the time – are so often rendered in close-up. For the remake, these moments also clearly showcase the upgrades. We see the cracked paint, dirt and sweat streaking across the pores on Snake’s face. New creases are added to The Boss’s forehead, brightly lit by the twilight sun during a (still very long) bridge change. The camera even pans in close enough to capture the fine stitching of his uniform, while the felt texture on Ocelot’s cap takes on a crisp, photorealistic quality. Looking more broadly at the jungle itself, every dent in the tree bark, the hard, textured skin of the crocodiles, and the protrusions in the red brickwork of Rassvet clearly show the extent of the improvement.

Also – yes – MGS3’s occasional use of real footage makes a return. The remake utilises the same archived footage as the original to set up its paranoia-fuelled Cold War backdrop, a montage of Robert F Kennedy speeches and military marches rendered in sepia, now at a higher resolution. Also, in keeping with the video treatment, codec calls now play back with an audible boost in encode quality in the PS5 build being showcased.

On that note, a few words on the current state of the PS5 version. The early build I played offered a slick, smooth 4K menu with the provision of two graphics modes: a performance mode (which openly states that it uses a dynamic 1080p up to 4K resolution, targeted at 60 frames per second) and a visual mode (dynamic 1440p up to 4K at 30 fps).

I like the transparency here. Only the 30fps visuals mode was available for the demo, though thankfully this proved to be a perfectly stable experience aside from a noticeable drop during a camera cross fade. There are no ray tracing features included, according to Okamura, but it’ll be interesting to see if Unreal Engine 5’s Lumen technology makes its way into the final release in some form, as a partial step towards RTGI or reflections. Finally, for those inclined to tinker further, it looks like we’ll also be getting a motion blur setting that goes up to ultra on PS5, plus a depth of field toggle.

A new “modern” control scheme marks the remake’s biggest, and potentially most controversial, change. It’s an overhaul that effectively moves Delta much closer to Metal Gear Solid 5 , where the L2 and R2 buttons are used to aim and fire, while holding the d-pad left or right brings up item and weapon menus. These bindings have sensibly been tweaked to appeal to a modern audience, but crucially, they also make Snake more usable as a one-man army this time around.

The upshot is this: movement and aiming are now possible simultaneously, an added freedom (seen in the 3DS edition as well, to be fair) that Konami hopes to compensate for in Delta with updated enemy behaviour. There’s a new balance to be struck in the difficulty curve, but to be honest it seems to undermine the stealth-focused challenge of the original. Ultimately, Snake’s added agility now encourages a more hurried, Rambo-esque method of sweeping through each section of jungle. There’s no doubt in my mind, it gets the job done a lot quicker – while a promised alternative, legacy control scheme (not available to play in this build) should provide a fairer Metal Gear experience.

So much of the original AI’s behavior is still present despite this. Metal Gear’s quirks are welcome nonetheless: enemies still fire suddenly, in an excruciatingly smooth left-right motion, only just now as you put them in your sights. They still fly comically through the air after crashing into a rolling barrel. They still have the same classic “faint” animation after being stunned, and they bolt halfway into their sentry path. Metal Gear has often found its fun in combining dense, military rhetoric with these moments of slapstick, of emerging silliness in its mechanics.

All of this remains, and even the Kerotan toy collectibles return. Indeed, every inch of Snake Eater’s jungles have been meticulously recreated—so much so that there’s no intention of removing the loading screens between areas. I can confirm, speaking to Okamura, that even later boss battles, like The End, still take place in multiple forest areas separated by a fade to black. In many ways, the parameters of Metal Gear’s levels are a core part of the series’ game design, and so they remain for a doggedly faithful remake.

Beyond a loose timeframe of 2024, there’s no specific release date for Metal Gear Solid Delta yet. The outlook, however, is positive. While I have reservations about the game’s rebalance – especially when you consider the combination of new control mechanisms with tight, PS2-era levels – it’s still the most exciting project Konami has released in years. The visual upgrades are profound, and I’m eager to see whether the promised 60fps mode delivers. Fortunately, the blueprint that Hideo Kojima and his team have laid out is a strong one. So much of the game’s appeal, setting, and cutscene direction still shine today, and the remake has a real chance to introduce a classic to a fresh, new audience.