The upcoming release of Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, the remake of 2004’s Metal Gear Solid 3, marks a major turning point for Konami’s stealth action series. Due to come out before the end of this year, Delta will end a nine-year drought since 2015’s Phantom Pain (we don’t count Survive). And while Delta isn’t a true new entry in the series, an ad for the game teases that it might open the doors for Metal Gear to make a major comeback.
After showing off Delta’s updated graphics and unique mechanical additions (like a damage system that will permanently scar Snake’s body), Konami released “Metal Gear Solid Legacy Series Part 2” on YouTube. Hosted by David Hayter (the original voice of Snake), the deep-dive video mostly serves as a refresher on the things we saw during the Xbox Showcase, but it also features an interview with producer Noriaki Okamura. This is where things get interesting.
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Okamura says that one of the hopes for Delta is that it will help players to judge whether the new team is “right for the job of keeping Metal Gear going.” That mission is two-fold.
Firstly, Okamura explains that the reason for Delta’s existence was that Konami noticed new gamers weren’t familiar with the series. In tandem with the Master Collection, the new Metal Gear team wanted to preserve the series’ past for new generations. Delta will act as an introduction to the series for new gamers, which makes sense considering it is, by in-world measurement, chronologically the first game in the series.
Secondly, the new team has also been entrusted with “the future of Metal Gear.” This suggests that Konami is using Delta to test the waters for further entries. That could take the form of a series of remakes of past games, a strategy that has been a great success for Capcom with its Resident Evil remakes. But more enticingly, it could mean that if Delta performs well, and the development team delivers the project Konami is hoping for, an entirely new story in the series could be on the way.
Of course, without the involvement of series creator Hideo Kojima—who left Konami on bad terms shortly after the release of MGSV in 2015—many see no future in the series. However, Konami has previously expressed interest in keeping the series alive without Kojima.
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