Players already know that Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater won’t be straying from the source material in any significant way. But developers at Konami are going in and tweaking the difficulty of the game, depending on how players want to revisit this 20-year-old classic.
Metal Gear Solid Delta, the upcoming Unreal Engine 5 remake of the third game in the series, will adjust the way its levels are balanced depending on which control scheme players pick, the game’s creative producer Yuji Korekado told Famitsu. Those who select the “Legacy Style” option at the start of a new game will get to enjoy the revamped visuals layered over the old game’s top down presentation.
The so called “New Style,” will let players sneak through the jungle using a more modern, third-person camera. While the 2006 re-release of Snake Eater introduced a third person camera option, Delta is bringing the player’s viewpoint over Snake’s shoulder, similar to most action games today. Along with the camera’s repositioning, Snake will also get new mobility options like the ability to crouch walk and aiming as he moves.
Korekado tells the outlet that modernizing Snake’s abilities introduced some unforeseen issues that required creating a separate new play style.
“New Style provides a wider, linear field of view, and you can shoot while moving Snake, which made the difficulty level lower than we had expected,” Korekado said, according to a translation from Automaton Media. “However, if we were to adjust things to match the New Style, that would make the Legacy Style too difficult. That’s why we decided to split the two play styles.”
Korekado confirmed that aiming a weapon accurately no longer requires players to go into first-person view, but the option will still be there for combat and exploration. While both modes seem worth checking out for different reasons, players will have to commit to one over the other at the start of a playthrough. Switching between the two on the fly is not a possibility, according to Korekado.
Looking to the future of the franchise, producer Noriaki Okamura says they couldn’t remake the original Metal Gear games on the MSX or Metal Gear Solid in the same way they’ve approached the third game. They cited the need to redesign significant parts of how those games played compared to the preservation approach they took with the more recent Metal Gear Solid 3.
“Before anyone involved is gone, we will create a path to preserve the Metal Gear series for the next 10 or 50 years,” Okamura. “This is something we have to do.”
Metal Gear Solid fans are eating good in the years ahead. Not only is Metal Gear Solid Delta set to release sometime this fall, Konami has all but confirmed that Volume 2 of the Metal Gear Solid Master Collection is on the way. This collection would likely include 2015’s Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, 2010’s Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, as well as the most overlooked game in the franchise, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns Of The Patriots.
