With the release of Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, the remake of Metal Gear Solid 3, just days away, Konami isn’t shying away from the franchise’s future.
It’s a future that’s been in question following the release of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, which marked the end of Hideo Kojima‘s tenure with Konami after a messy divorce.
Kojima has moved on to life as an independent studio, releasing two entries in the Death Stranding franchise, as well as an upcoming collaboration with Microsoft. The Metal Gear Solid series, on the other hand, has remained mostly quiet. There was the survival action game in 2018, Metal Gear Survive, but we don’t talk about that.
Aside from that and 2023’s Master Collection, the Snake Eater remake is the first Metal Gear Solid project in a decade, and easily the one with the most promise. Chances are, though, that there’s more on the horizon.
Konami Is Hoping The Snake Eater Remake Can Pass The Torch To New Developers
At a recent press event for the game’s launch, Rolling Stone spoke with Noriaki Okamura and Yuji Korekado, two producers for Metal Gear Solid Delta and longtime veterans of the Metal Gear series in general. Okamura has been working on the franchise for 20 years, first starting with Metal Gear Acid 2, while Korekado has worked on games such as The Twin Snakes remake for the Gamecube, Ground Zeroes, and Phantom Pain.
The two explained that the return of the Metal Gear Solid franchise isn’t just about bringing a classic game to a new audience, but also learning about what this current generation of gamers would like to see from a possible future installment.
We only have a few years left out of us to make a game, right? And one of the things that we noticed, and what really kicked off this project, is that we started seeing a huge wave of new gamers that [weren’t] even aware or didn’t even [know] Metal Gear before,” Okamura told Rolling Stone.” And [we] were like, ‘We need to do something about this because we wanted to carry on the legacy.'”
Okamura is hoping that by bringing in a group of newer, younger developers, he can not only introduce the series to them, but also set the stage for what they could accomplish with a new Metal Gear Solid game.
So, one of the reasons why we brought in a lot of fresh meat — all the new, younger developers — is because, not only did we want to give them a chance to figure out how to create and develop a Metal Gear game, but also give them a chance to experience the game themselves. And we’ll still be here for a while, but right now the goal is to build a team that could carry on the legacy on our behalf and could produce, hopefully in the future, more exciting games.
The concept of a new Metal Gear Solid without Hideo Kojima feels like a wild thing to say, even ten years after he left Konami, but that’s the state of the world we’re in. We’ll see if Konami’s future generation of developers are up to the task, as well as if they can win over longtime Metal Gear Solid fans.