Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater Might Be a Little Too Faithful to the Original [Hands-On Preview]

There’s few games more revered than 2004’s Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, which makes Konami’s upcoming Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater all the more perilous of a remake. Without former director Hideo Kojima at the helm, many worry Konami will release a game that fails to do the original justice or improve it in a meaningful manner. In short, people are worried it’s a cash grab, especially with Konami’s past blunders with the franchise.

The demo I played at the 2024 Tokyo Game Show didn’t assuage any of these fears, though perhaps it did give a little bit of an idea of what to expect. Set at Konami’s dominating booth in one corner of the show floor, staff ushered me into a dark room to watch the 20 minute opening scene. 

It’s all redone with much better graphics while maintaining the intensity of the original: taking place aboard a military plane, a soldier repeatedly requests Naked Snake to put on his air pressurization mask while Major Zero goes over mission objectives to capture the Soviet scientist Sokolov. Snake then leaps from the back of the plane as music blares before landing deep within a jungle.

Here, in true Metal Gear fashion, Snake chats on the radio with Major Zero, Para-Medic, and Snake’s former mentor Big Boss for a very, very long time. I only make note of that because the demo was a short 15 minutes of gameplay, so while it’s been more than a decade since I last played Metal Gear Solid 3, I skipped through this as quickly as possible to get at the gameplay.

Here, what you think of Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater will entirely depend on what you want from such a remake. This isn’t at all like Final Fantasy VII Remake, for example, which is more of a reimagining than anything. Instead, from what I played it seems like Konami wants it to match the original as closely as possible, for better or worse.

I admit I’m not a huge Metal Gear fan, but other media, press, and exhibitors that played the demo I met came away from it with two minds: either this remake of Snake Eater changed too little or they’re glad it wasn’t changed much at all.

Let me explain: in the demo, I learned how to scale trees, hide from foes, equip specific equipment to raise my camouflage level, crossed through a crocodile-infested swamp, and took down a handful of foes either in close-quarters combat or with a tranquilizer gun. I played up until the first bridge section where a guard waits on one end with two others crossing toward me, and I managed to avoid them by hanging off the side of the bridge and quietly shimming along.

I couldn’t get a grasp on some of the newer mechanics Konami has promised, like falling leaves raising Snake’s camouflage level or scars and injuries remaining visible after he takes damage. I did wonder how much or how little this would change the gameplay – but that’s a question best left answered by a bigger Metal Gear fan than me.

It all felt intuitive and I had little issues learning the controls. It looked great too – the jungle, rather than being a drab sepia, had a bit more color to it, with plenty of hi-res textures on both Snake himself, the enemies, and the environments. Snake can now also aim in third person, crouch walk, and the like, providing some welcome quality-of-life improvements.

On the other hand, it couldn’t maintain a stable frame-rate on what I believe was a quality mode, and I couldn’t find an option for a performance mode. This is especially shocking because this remake maintains the original’s small maps with loading screens in between. I personally was surprised the environments weren’t more connected and that they instead still cut them up like in the original PlayStation 2 versions, but I’ve also been told this is a bad take by more diehard Metal Gear fans.

While the environments have been updated, other areas haven’t: ammo boxes float off the ground and spin, arcade-style. Snake still moves rather rigidly, and while I can’t say for certain, the AI doesn’t seem any smarter this time around. It really begs the question of what Konami put effort into remastering: is it just the general environments, a few quality-of-life improvements, and cutscenes, which in turn makes this a faithful remake? Or is there more that makes this a new experience?

That’ll be for the Metal Gear diehards to find out when it releases sometime in 2024 (though I wouldn’t be surprised if it was pushed back into 2025). I expect a lot of people to either love or hate the remake of this legendary, genre and franchise-defining title, and I can’t wait to see where the general consensus lands.