Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater launched a new beginning for a largely dormant franchise that was once the talk of the gaming scene when it arrived this past summer. Remaking the beloved third mainline entry was no easy task, but apart from some not-too-terrible technical issues and probably sending the online mode out to die, Konami has done a bang-up job.
The MGS3 remake’s success has paved the way for this development team to move forward with future projects in the Metal Gear series, but what comes next? The series’ current producer says they’re still hammering things down — but for those of us who’d love a remake of Metal Gear Solid 4, let’s just keep our expectations in check. It would, as he says, be a rather difficult endeavour.
“Some Pretty Special Code”
Metal Gear Solid producer Noriaki Okamura shepherded the saga’s triumphant Big Boss origin story return, and now, in an interview with Japanese publication RealSound, he’s answering some hefty queries. Asked what Okamura has in mind for the next chapter of his team’s tenure, he answered as follows:
“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.” -Noriaki Okamura
As you can see above, there might be something freshly-added to the franchise envisioned and long-created by Hideo Kojima before further remakes occur. Alternatively, it might be remake city for a while longer, or a mixture of the two. What caught my eye in particular, however, was Okamura’s answer when RealSound’s interviewer mentioned a personal interest in a Metal Gear Solid 4 remake:
“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.”
MGS4’s code is infamous in this regard, and we’re not even sure whether it will show up in the previously-announced Metal Gear Solid Collection Vol. 2, whenever that emerges. As Okamura knows well, it’s just… not an easy game to port. Otacon harped on about the power of PlayStation 3 in a famous codec conversation, but for all his happiness over Blu-ray technology, the processor itself made the console something of a nightmare to develop on.
Is Okamura saying no MGS4 remake is on the horizon? Of course not. Is he casting some measure of doubt that it’s around the bend? Probably. Regardless, he’s being real about the headaches that could follow. At least, that’s what I’m getting out of his quote, so unless the translation is wonky, or it’s one of those “you had to be there to catch the inflection and body language” moments that make news reporting so arduous sometimes, I think it’s fair to say that we should all keep our expectations in check.
