With Metal Gear series producer Noriaki Okamura having expressed an interest in a potential remake of the PS3-exclusive Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, in the same interview with Real Sound (as translated by GamesRadar), he also spoke about this having been the perfect time for the Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater remake. Discussing the remake – released earlier this year as Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater – Okamura, along with director Yuji Korekado, spoke about being respectful towards the original creators while also refining the game to be more palatable for modern players.
“Because the series has been around for a long time, we have a wide variety of fans,” said Korekado. “And we are conscious of being respectful to the previous games in the series. With this remake, we thought about how it would be best to bring the game to modern players, while respecting the thoughts and concepts of the original creator. However, if you reproduce the original work exactly as it is, some aspects can be difficult to play [for today’s gamers], so we adapted them.”
Okamura also discussed the circumstances of Metal Gear series creator Hideo Kojima’s departure from Konami back in 2015, and how this departure also affected the company’s plans to continue with the Metal Gear franchise. He spoke about trying to figure the next steps for the series out without the original staff, as well as the fact that a remake of one of the classics in the franchise was a now-or-never thing to do because of the number of developers with knowledge of the franchise was going down.
“With losing the original staff, it was challenging figuring out how to continue the series,” Okamura explained. “We would start and stop talking about developing something new all the time. However, given our age, and how the number of developers with knowledge of the Metal Gear series was decreasing, we decided that if we didn’t resurrect the series now, it would become difficult to do so. Because it’s such an incredible series, I decided that now was the time.”
As for the future of the Metal Gear franchise, Okamura spoke about not quite being sure about what’s going to happen. While Konami and the development team behind Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater might be trying to figure out what to do next, Okamura is personally “quite hopeful about a remake of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots,” since the title has essentially been stuck on the PS3 since its 2008 launch.
“The hardware back then demanded quite a specialised approach to achieve 3D performance with the technology available at the time, and Metal Gear Solid 4 ended up with some rather peculiar code too,” said Okamura. “Bringing it forward now would be quite a challenge, wouldn’t it?”
Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater was released on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S back in August. The title has been quite praised, and you can check out more details in our review.
