Metal Gear Solid Delta is Metal Gear Solid 3. “What a revelation,” you think, “I can’t believe this remake is so similar to the game it’s remaking.”
But no, really, hear me out. Delta isn’t MGS3 in the way that the Silent Hill 2 remake is Silent Hill 2, or the way Final Fantasy 7 remake is FF7. After spending an hour and a half with it, I can say that this thing is a shot-for-shot, meticulously detailed recreation of the original PS2 masterpiece, which I consider to be one of the best video games of all time. Konami doesn’t seem to have taken any liberties with the classic.
Close your eyes and imagine MGS3 in the brilliant Unreal Engine 5 and you’ve already had 95% of the experience I saw in my hands-on demo. Aside from a few mechanics from MGS5 and a few quality of life features, this is the game as it was, in a brand new package. With Hideo Kojima long gone from Konami and trust in the company in short supply, I think this is exactly what fans are looking for, even if I have a few philosophical doubts about the value of a remake that sticks so single-mindedly to the original.
And scene
My demo consisted of the entire Virtuous Mission – the prologue to MGS3 that sets the tone for the story to come and introduces us to characters like Naked Snake, The Boss, Ocelot, and Volgin. It is – I’m going to have to think of lots of different ways to say this in this preview – exactly as you remember it.
Except, of course, that everything looks a lot better. Konami has taken advantage of the technological advances of the last two decades to make MGS Delta look damn good in Unreal Engine 5. The foliage is lush; the jungle feels hot, menacing, and oppressive; and all of those characters now have detailed faces and expressions to match their voice acting, which is lifted directly from the original game—no re-recordings here.
There’s no denying that it looks great. Konami and Virtuos have done an excellent job of translating the feel of the original game into a slick, modern package, so much so that I didn’t even miss the yellowish piss filter that was a trademark of OG MGS3 (and which Konami says will be an option in the full remake).
There Was It’s a little odd to hear these voices from such detailed characters, though. Honestly, it might just be because I’m far too used to the original game, but I did experience something of an uncanny valley effect when hearing the exaggerated, anime-like voices of David Hayter and Josh Keaton from models that otherwise seemed so naturalistic and human. It’s a very minor criticism of the otherwise impressive finesse, though, and I suspect I’d get used to it over the course of a longer playthrough.
What a thrill
Select favorites
There’s one new feature that long-time fans will immediately notice in Delta: new MGS games to select as favorites. Back in the day, when starting a new game for the first time in the original MGS3, players were asked which game in the series was the best: 1, 2, or (in Subsistence) 3. There was also the option to indicate that it was your first time playing an MGS. Some of these options unlocked bonuses or Easter eggs. In Delta, you can now select other games like Peace Walker or MGS4 and 5. Unfortunately, the bonuses for selecting these games were not included in the version I played.
The flow of the Virtuous Mission is, say it with me, exactly as you remember it: Snake is sent to sneak through the jungle and snatch a defecting Soviet scientist named Sokolov, he makes the “world’s first HALO jump” to do it, a guy on the plane calls him a “wimp” in a way no human has ever used before or since, and so on. I’m almost certain that the historical archive footage – videos of Nikita Khrushchev and the like used to illustrate the game’s ’60s Cold War context – is exactly the same as what was used back then. Even the R1 prompts, those ways to switch perspective mid-cutscene to see exactly what Snake is looking at, are all still where they were on the PS2.
After about 15 minutes of cutscenes and codec calls (oh yeah, this is still Metal Gear), I was in. Snake’s gear is stuck on a tree and I had to use a movement tutorial to move to it. The area, like every area I moved through in my demo, is a replica of its original counterpart.
Konami hasn’t turned MGS Delta into an MGS5-style open world. I still moved between areas – Dremuchij South, Dremuchij Marshland, Dolinovodno, Rassvet – which were separated by loading screens. Items like the SVD sniper, XM16E1 assault rifle, and M37 shotgun were exactly where I remembered them, as were the enemies and their patrol routes. The only difference I could spot was the addition of a new collectible alongside the original game’s Kerotan frogs: small orange GA-KO ducks that I could shoot to presumably unlock items later.
I’m already wondering a little bit what a version of Delta that takes more creative liberties would look like. You’re going to think I’m crazy, probably rightly so. Do I really trust the modern Konami without Kojima to do something interesting and new with the classic? Not really, but the fact is that I have MGS3 on my SSD right now, easily accessible and ready to play. It’s not a perfect version – although Konami seems relatively committed to fixing it – but it’s still an excellent game. Do I really need a souped-up but otherwise nearly identical version? No, I’m sure that’s what most people who aren’t me want.
Additionally, parts of my demo were a joy, even if they felt very familiar. Metal Gear’s playful experimentation feel is intact. You can still hold enemies up and – by pointing your gun at their head or penis – force them to do a little dance that takes your loot, and you can still drop hornets on your enemies’ heads or use stunned jungle creatures in combat.
The Metal Gear sense of playful experimentation has been retained.
After completing the demo once, I even went back in to try to shoot the ropes on the bridge over Dolinovodno. Yes, it works, and yes, it makes the damn thing incredibly impossible for enemies – and Snake – to cross. Tragically, my attempt to trigger a time paradox by murdering a young revolver-wielding ocelot didn’t work (the damn boy was invulnerable to my shotgun blasts), but I’m almost certain that’s because this is an early version of the game.
Kuwabara-shi, Kuwabara-shi
So it’s still the Metal Gear you love when you play it, but the gameplay also shows the remake’s slight mechanical differences from its predecessor. Despite not using the FOX Engine, everything is a bit more MGS5. Snake can now crouch instead of having to completely switch between belly crawling and sprinting, and I was able to aim over Snake’s shoulder using the left trigger instead of being forced to use iron sights to get more accurate shots.
It has never quite felt as fluid as MGS5 to me, but it’s certainly smoother to play than the PS2 game. I never had to twist my hand into bizarre shapes to stand on tiptoes while aiming down the sights like in the older games, nor did I ever mix up my melee buttons and accidentally slit a hostage’s throat like I did in the old days. The game now displays helpful hints telling you which buttons are for interrogation, takedown, and kill when you’re grabbing a bad guy from behind.
Other systems, like the Survival Viewer, are—wait, let me get out the thesaurus—analogous and parallel to their appearance in the original game. The same. I mean, they’re the same. You still have to decide which weapons and items go into your quick select and which stay in your backpack (and the more you have on hand, the faster your stamina goes down), and you can still go into the stealth area to change your clothing and face paint so you blend in with the jungle.
The only difference I could spot was the addition of some quality of life features: you can now hold down the D-pad to quickly cycle through a list of camouflage/face paint presets, or hold down any other button to quickly access codec frequencies, and you can equip a compass in the left item menu that acts as a quest marker and shows you where to go to progress in the story. The only part of the Survival Viewer I didn’t have access to was the injury/healing system, but I’d be surprised if it was significantly different from the PS2 era.
So there are some small changes, but mechanically it’s still very, very MGS3, so much so that my muscle memory regularly resorted to the old game’s controller inputs, with disastrous results. The full version of MGS Delta lets players use either the old or a new gamepad control scheme, but my demo limited me to the new one. Does that mean I accidentally stood up when I wanted to lie down, or did a rapid roll when I wanted to switch to first person? Did that then set off an enemy alarm and force me to roam the jungle in close combat and put about a hundred KGB soldiers to sleep? The answers to those questions have unfortunately been lost to time.
Okay, yes, that happened. Right in front of the developers. Shameful.
You are pretty good
Therefore, I believe Metal Gear Solid Delta is shaping up to be exactly what fans want it to be: an incredibly faithful retelling of one of the greatest games of all time, with all the latest graphical bells and whistles and only very minor tweaks to make it a little more playable for the Zoomers and Generation Alpha out there who might be bothered by the wackier elements of the classic controls.
Of course, I personally never really understood what remakes like this mean. With MGS3 Cool Original now playable on PC and Konami slowly tinkering with it to make it a really decent port, I’m perfectly happy to play it for the rest of my life, but I won’t pretend that most fans don’t want a shiny, accurate and slick remake of their old favorite. If what I’ve seen from Delta is any indication, that’s exactly what we’re getting. Well done Snake, age hasn’t slowed you down one bit.
