While Metal Gear Solid Delta is no longer the hottest game in the town — given the fact that it came out in August — it is undeniable that it made big waves, with most publications giving it either maximum or close to maximum scores.
Our own review on the game was nothing but praise, especially since Japanese publisher Konami decided this remake should be as faithful as possible to its 2003 original.
And now that that particular ship has sailed to beautiful waters, we can’t help but wonder “what now” in unison — and while Konami is gladly offering some answers, there’s one part of it you may not like.
Speaking to RealSound, Metal Gear Solid Delta’s producer, Noriaki Okamura, has admitted that while other remakes are definitely on the table, he and his team want to try and create new content to move the Hideo Kojima-created franchise further down its story.
However, since things are still on the “to-be-decided” phase, a still-open wound has been flaring up again: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots was originally released in 2008, on PlayStation 3, but it is the only game in the franchise that has yet to receive a remaster or a remake.
And the reason for that is more complicated than you think:
“The hardware at the time required some pretty special construction to deliver 3D performance with the technology available at the time, and MGS4 also had some pretty special code… It would be pretty hard to do it now.”
Noriaki Okamura
To be truthful to our reporting, he’s not lying: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots does have a “special” code, in the form of several custom optimizations made specifically to make it run the way it did on the PS3. The two-generation-old console had a quirky Cell processor with one main PPE core and seven SPEs, all of which demanded some low-level assembly wizardry to squeeze out top-tier 3D performance back in 2008.
Not to be all technical about it, but in layman’s terms, seeing those texture transitions from Solid Snake’s Octocamo happen seamlessly, at the same time the cuts between cinematics and gameplay were almost indistinguishable…well, that was not a mere case of “make the game with this PS3 dev unit”, and some workarounds had to be made.
Not only that, but even the customary stuff, like environments, would be troubling, considering Metal Gear Solid 4 goes everywhere, from sandy, sun-scorching deserts, passing through nightly, urban capitals; ample, snowy fields and even a world class warship — outside of it and inside . Reproducing the scenery alone would be some chore, is what we’re saying.
Even in the case of a MGS4 remaster, which is, for a lot of people, a mere case of “CTRL-C” a game in the old platform just to “CTRL-V” it in a new one, porting Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots for modern day consoles or even the PC, as hi-end as those may be, would be a nightmare long before it became a successful bliss.
So, all in all, it looks like Konami does not feel like tackling this right now. Maybe in the future, given the fact that the company does recognize th public outcry for it. But still, a lot of adaptations would have to be made before the idea is even properly on paper, let alone out of it.
“There may be remakes, but we may also try new works. The Metal Gear series is like the history of video games, and it ranges from pixel art to cinematic expressions, so the remake method and expression method for each work is different. We don’t intend to apply the methodology we created for MGS Delta to all of our works, but rather we will consider the best method for each work”, Okamura stated.
Which is too bad, really: if you’re up to date on your Metal Gear Solid lore, you know that the fourth mainline entry is Solid Snake’s (Delta’s Naked Snake clone/son) au revoir mission, riding to the sunset after one last, hard-fought global battle. Hell, a lot of its narrative plot points are still very contemporary, like rogue AIs and private military companies.
Still, if you want in on some Metal Gear Solid 4 action, you might wanna hook your PS3 backup (or buy a refurbished one at Amazon, I hear there are some interesting deals on Black Friday for it). Other than that, well, we’re waiting a bit more.
And to think, Konami still has that Master Collection Volume 2 to bring back…but Noriaki’s words, if taken at face value, give room to understant that a MGS 4 remaster, or MGS 4 remake, or even a simple Guns of the Patriots port, will not be among the titles included in the future bundle, whenever it may come out.
