Metal Gear Solid producer wants MGS4 Remake, but admits it’s a “real challenge”

Metal Gear Solid series producer Noriaki Okamura recently sat down for an interview with Japanese outlet Real Sound. A translation of the interview comes courtesy of Metal Gear Network (via Push Square), and in the interview, Okamura says he is personally “hoping for a remake of Metal Gear Solid 4 Guns of the Patriots,” but admits it would be a “real challenge”.

As for why it would be a challenge, Okamura points the finger at the hardware of the PS3. The series producer says, “The hardware of that era required some extremely unique design choices to get good 3D performance with the tech available, and MGS4 ended up with some pretty unusual code because of that”.

While Okamura is personally hoping for a remake of Metal Gear Solid 4, he also admits they haven’t decided on the next project for the series. “Right now we’re still in the stage of figuring out what to make next,” says Okamura, adding, “We might work on another remake, or we might try creating something entirely new”.

Okamura further shares that the “ideal approach to remaking or representing each title is different” because the Metal Gear Solid series “spans everything from pixel art to film-like presentation”. Basically, this means Konami “doesn’t intend to apply the exact methodology used for Metal Gear Solid Delta to every game”.

Reflecting on the success of Delta, Okamura is full of praise, saying, “A lot of the original staff had left, and the team had to be rebuilt… we’re confident that we preserved the charm of the original while delivering a level of quality modern players can enjoy”.

More Metal Gear Solid remakes, please

Whether it’s Metal Gear Solid 4 or something else, we would love more remakes from Konami and the team behind Delta. If we’re going by timeline, Portal Ops and Peace Walker would be next, followed by Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain, but Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain are way too recent to justify remakes.

Then there is Metal Gear 1 and 2, followed by the PS1 classic, Metal Gear Solid. MGS is probably the installment everyone wants Konami to remake the most. Konami says remaking Metal Gear Solid 1 would be a lot harder than Snake Eater because it would require the creation of many brand new elements. So whatever Konami chooses next, don’t expect it to come anytime soon.

Metal Gear Solid Delta is a perfect recreation of arguably the series’ best game and story. It admittedly launched with rough performance on the PS5 Pro, but it was otherwise excellent. Unfortunately, its original creator, Hideo Kojima, has no plans to play the game because he wants the games industry to make experiences that are “really new”.

Konami is toying with the idea of a new Metal Gear Solid installment, but it’s harder to trust the series continuing without Kojima compared to remaking the past. Fortunately, after OD, Kojima is returning to the espionage genre with Physint, but this is in the far-off future, too.