Don’t remake the Metal Gear Saga, re-release it
Editorial by Jen Miller, Posted on November 3, 2021
UPDATE: In 2023, Konami announced the Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection series of compilations, bringing older titles to modern platforms. Volume 1 includes every canonical Metal Gear game from the original Metal Gear to Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. Assuming Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker are included in a future Master Collection volume, then I say; Mission Accomplished.
Earlier this year, Sony was poised to shut down game purchases off of the PlayStation Network for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, and PlayStation Portable storefronts. After strong community pushback, including whistleblowers for the PS3’s CMOS battery issue, Sony has since recanted its decision for the PS3 and Vita storefronts.
Although digital armageddon has been delayed, this incident acts as a sober reminder of the fragility of video game preservation. Of the many classics of yesteryear, few are readily available on modern systems. Rockstar Games recently delisted the original versions of the PlayStation 2-era Grand Theft Auto games from various platforms, limiting the customer’s choices to the uncanny-looking “Definitive Editions” (while we’re not sure as of this writing if there’s any missing music, it would be a shame considering their iconic soundtracks). Despite the popularity of 2018’s God of War soft-reboot, only the third game is available on modern platforms. The PS3 remasters of the PS2 and PSP games are virtually inaccessible, due to the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 not being backwards compatible with PS3 games. Had the PS3’s PSN Store shut down, newcomers would be unable to legally, affordably purchase classic PlayStation games such as Final Fantasy Tactics, the original Silent Hill and, of course, the original Metal Gear Solid.
In fact, the PS3 remains the only system where it’s possible to play through the entire canonical Metal Gear Saga. Unfortunately the PS3 discontinued production in 2017, and a used system can currently go for over $100 on eBay. Coupled with eventual and inevitable hardware failures of aging tech, that price will likely only increase with time.
For a series whose primary message is to pass down our values and culture to the next generation, it’s a tragic irony that the barrier to entry can be so steep for newcomers.
With news that Konami is seemingly getting back into developing major triple-A video games, and with the success of their Castlevania and Contra Anniversary Collections, now is the perfect time for Metal Gear fans to call for the preservation of our beloved Saga.
Of course, in the case of some games, this is easier said than done.
The HD Collection: Re-releasing a Remaster
The contents of the Metal Gear Solid: HD Collection seem to be the easiest to port, especially since the collection has already seen a port on the PC-like architecture of the Xbox 360. In fact, ARM-based platforms such as the Vita and the NVIDIA Shield TV already received ports of the HD Editions of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, though with some flaws (the Vita version of Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake has music issues, while the Shield TV version of Snake Eater HD sadly omits the classic MSX titles altogether). The 360 version of the HD Collection even adapted the aiming and CQC mechanics to Xbox controllers which lack pressure sensitive buttons. While Bluepoint Games did a good job with these remasters, it’d be nice if a rerelease fixed the Snake Eater theme starting earlier than it should in the game’s intro, or reincorporate the Guy Savage nightmare easter egg.
Although many fans may prefer full blown remakes of the MSX games, it shouldn’t be that difficult to at least get the original games bundled with the rest of the HD Collection. Though hopefully a new port of Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake won’t be missing the song “Killers” like the Vita port does.
Porting over Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker might be trickier due to its online elements. If Konami doesn’t want to bother with adapting its online functionality, they could simply cut out the Versus and co-op features, but this would necessitate rebalancing the entire game to minimize frustration with gaining new recruits and battling the various mech bosses, while also negating many co-op exclusive items and related Briefing Tapes. It’d be cool if the game at least added split-screen if online is stripped out.
Coupled with both parts of Metal Gear Solid V already being playable on modern systems, that means we would already have six of the eight mainline installments covered.
Must There Be a Metal Gear Solid Re-remake?
Other than the MSX games, the most often requested Metal Gear title to be remade is the original Metal Gear Solid. Every couple of months, we get a new rumor about how a Metal Gear Solid remake is right around the corner, with the goalposts being moved each time it turns out to be false. While most people love the amazing story, iconic setting, and memorable characters, some feel that the game’s graphics and mechanics have aged so poorly that the game is “unplayable” nowadays.
In the current, digitized world, trivial information is accumulating every second, preserved in all its triteness. Never fading, always accessible. Rumors about Metal Gear remakes, misinterpretations, Silent Hills revivals… All this junk data, preserved in an unfiltered state, growing at an alarming rate.
The problem with remaking Metal Gear Solid is that everyone has a different idea on how the game should be remade. Hell, it’s already been remade as Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, and people to this day debate if it was any good.
Some believe that a remake should update the graphics while keeping the gameplay, cutscenes, and the music intact. This is the approach taken by The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening for the Switch, Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, Spyro Reignited Trilogy, and the Bluepoint remakes of Shadow of the Colossus and Demon’s Souls. However, even these remakes have been criticized for deviating from the original game’s art style.
Although the Fat Official has more polygons in the Demon’s Souls remake (right), the design of his original PS3 model (left) looks more interesting. Why should a remake have such a drastically different art style? It’s like painting over the Mona Lisa and giving her a big rack.A potential compromise can be found with the Anniversary editions of Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2. 343 Industries was concerned that remaking the games on a more recent engine would fundamentally alter the feel of the games. So instead, their approach was a midpoint between a remaster and a remake: the original games are running underneath a fresh coat of paint, with models and assets ripped from the more recent games. Of course there were plenty of valid criticisms against Anniversary’s art direction changes, which makes the fact that you can switch back to the original graphics with the press of a button all the better. In theory, everybody wins.
Others feel that Metal Gear Solid’s gameplay is too archaic to remain as it is, despite the success of more recent fixed-camera stealth games like Mike Bithell’s Volume. Instead, they call for a remake to adopt the gameplay mechanics of The Phantom Pain. At that point, however, the game would be virtually unrecognizable, as everything from level design, bosses, and possibly even the narrative would need to be completely redone from the ground up, or else exacerbate the problems of The Twin Snakes.
Imagine how much easier fighting Revolver Ocelot would be with The Phantom Pain’s mechanics!And then there’s the time, money, and effort needed for a remake of any kind. The Resident Evil 2 remake, for example, effectively had the budget and scope of a brand new Resident Evil game, despite being a “reimagining” of an older game. Due to modern expectations for game design, narrative, and presentation, moments and characters were either reinterpreted (for better or worse) or cut entirely. This is especially true for the Resident Evil 3 remake, which nerfed the Nemesis encounters and left out iconic locations such as the interiors of the Clock Tower.
Whereas the original Final Fantasy VII encompassed the entire planet of Gaia, the first installment of the Final Fantasy VII Remake project only took place in the city of Midgar. Adapting the entirety of the original game’s pre-rendered backgrounds into fully explorable 3D environments with HD-quality assets, not to mention updated character models, voice acting, and cinematics, would’ve been impractical for a single release, even putting aside how the ending set up future installments to go in a wildly different direction.
Can we trust modern Konami with creating a satisfying remake? If they were to outsource the task, can we trust this developer with reimagining such a revered game without fucking up the art style? Considering Konami’s lackluster track record with outsourcing their IPs (a trend they seem keen on continuing), there’s good reason to doubt.
This is basically what you’re asking for, when you say you want modern Konami to remake Metal Gear Solid again.The idea that everything needs a full remake in order to be rereleased would be considered anathema to any other medium. To this day, there are people clamoring for the theatrical cuts of the original Star Wars Trilogy, without the “graphical enhancements” of George Lucas’ various Special Editions. Imagine if the live-action remakes of classic animated Walt Disney films were seen as superior to the originals, due to looking “more realistic.” This insanity is what remakes like Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy have conditioned graphics-obsessed gamers into accepting as standard.
Some have criticized Super Mario 3D All-Stars for simply being an emulated repackage of Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, and Super Mario Galaxy. Although there’s plenty of valid complaints against the pricing and FOMO-inducing timed release, the critique of these games being mere enhanced emulations is misplaced. There’s nothing inherently wrong with simply preserving the original experiences and making them available on modern systems. The joy of Mario 64 transcends its limited polygons, and both Sunshine and Galaxy still look phenomenal when presented in a higher resolution.
The Last of Us already received a remaster, which is backwards compatible on PS5 and still looks great. Yet people are unironically excited for a remake. Saul Ed Sinek was supposed to be satire, people…Although some may disagree, perhaps it would be better, and far easier, to simply keep Metal Gear Solid as it currently is, wrap it in a PS1 emulator, and bundle it with a port of the HD Collection. At most they could swap out “O” with “X” as the confirm button and enable Codec skipping in order to be consistent with the HD Collection and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. Some may find the gameplay to be “dated”, but the game’s VR Training will hopefully acclimate modern gamers to old-school stealth.
If Metal Gear Solid abso-fucking-lutely has to be re-remade, then it should at least be bundled with an emulation of the original game, similar to the MediEvil remake. Those who are allergic to playing anything older than half a decade can jerk off to every individual pore of Solid Snake’s face (now voiced by Kiefer Sutherland?), while those who are interested in the original experience still have access to it.
How it makes SENSE to port Guns of the Patriots
Of the canonical Metal Gear games, the most difficult to bring to modern platforms would probably be Guns of the Patriots. The PS3’s Cell processor was notoriously difficult to develop for, and it took many years before third-party developers could get a handle on it and put out ports that weren’t inferior to their Xbox 360 counterparts.
*Shows infamous pre-rendered Killzone 2 trailer*
Guns of the Patriots was one of the first games to take full advantage of the PS3’s architecture. At the time, even first-party games like Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune only used 30% of Cell’s processing power. This has given rise to the perception that the game is virtually unportable, and that outside of emulation (which has only recently gotten to grips with the game), the game is essentially stuck on PS3.
This isn’t necessarily the case, however. For starters, Kojima himself toyed with the idea of bringing Guns of the Patriots to then-next-gen Xbox hardware. The fact that Kojima considered this at all shows that the game is far from “unportable.” In fact, according to Guns of the Patriots producer Ryan Payton, Kojima Productions actually got the game running “beautifully” on Xbox 360 devkits. The problem was that, because the game’s file size going beyond 25 GB, an Xbox 360 version would have to had shipped on about six discs. Now that Blu-ray discs and digital distribution have become more standard, this is no longer an issue.
Regardless, although the first Uncharted game didn’t take advantage of the PS3’s hardware as much as Guns of the Patriots did, both of its sequels used 100% of Cell’s processing power. Despite these games being so closely tied to the PS3’s architecture, Bluepoint were still able to remaster them for the PS4 as part of Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection.
Furthermore, Guns of the Patriots’ engine has already been ported to PC. Metal Gear Arcade was a version of Metal Gear Online 2 created for Japanese arcades. These Arcade machines are essentially modified Windows PCs, hence why the game can run on a normal PC.
This isn’t to say that remastering Guns of the Patriots for modern systems would be as simple as dragging and dropping files into the Metal Gear Arcade version of the engine. If ported to non-Sony consoles, Old Snake might have to control Metal Gear Mk.II with a generic gamepad rather than a DualShock 3. In-game product placements such as Regain, the iPod, Otacon’s MacBook Pro, and Vamp and Naomi’s shitty Japanese cellphones would probably need to either be renegotiated or retextured as well. Just as the Xbox 360 version of the HD Collection adapted Sons of Liberty and Snake Eater’s mechanics to controllers without pressure sensitive buttons, features that utilized the PS3’s SIXAXIS controls would also need to be adapted for platforms which lack it.
However, the point is that it’s definitely possible to bring Guns of the Patriots to modern systems if Konami can hire the right people and give them the time and money needed to do the job. Those “right people” might’ve been Bluepoint, but since they were recently acquired by Sony and are now working on original games (despite the many clickbait articles claiming they’re working on a Metal Gear Solid remake), that opportunity has seemingly passed. Hopefully another competent remaster studio can step up to the plate, and Konami doesn’t cheap out like they did with the Silent Hill: HD Collection.
Keeping the Past Alive
There’s a contingent of gamers who scoff at those who want backwards compatibility for prior generations of games, or have concerns about issues like online DRM requirements. “Why would anyone want to play old games?” These sentiments were infamously echoed by Jim Ryan, Sony’s head of global sales and marketing:
“Why would anyone play something old like Sons of Liberty, when you can play something more recent and therefore better, like Metal Gear Survive?”What Jim Ryan and the PlayStation fanboys who defend Sony’s lack of concern for game preservation fail to realize is that just because something is “old” doesn’t mean they lack value. Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey, works dating back to Ancient Greece, are still in print to this day. The works of Shakespeare have been kept in print for centuries, and are still being performed to this day. Films like Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather are still readily available for new generations of movie fans to experience. These films are not mere disposable entertainment. They’re works of art, meant to be experienced, studied, and discussed. If games are art—and they are—then we should expect—nay, demand—the same standard of preservation for games.
Some may point to PlayStation Now as a substitute for ports, but anything that relies on a constant internet connection isn’t preservation. Once these online services are discontinued (and they will, some day), the games hosted on these streaming services will be lost yet again since there’s no local files to back up and potentially restore through hacking. And with the technical complications of setting up a stable emulator it too should only be considered a last resort for hobbyists, rather than the fallback that many treat it as, to dismiss valid concerns over preservation and accessibility.
Just as those who can look past Citizen Kane being black-and-white will find themselves engaged by Orson Welles’ masterful filmmaking, those who are able to look past the dated graphics and relatively simplistic gameplay of the original Metal Gear Solid will be able to appreciate how the story, art style, music, voice acting, and even puppet-show-like body language of otherwise static character models all contribute to an atmosphere that’s greater than the sum of its low-polygonal parts.
Despite its “inferior” graphics, the original Metal Gear Solid packs more emotional weight than most modern games… including its graphically “superior” GameCube remake.Like any good work of art, each installment of the Metal Gear Saga stands the test of time with themes and storytelling that appeals to our inner humanity, even for those who played the games years after their initial release. We owe it to the coming generations the chance to experience them.
I mean, for fuck’s sake, if Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties can get ported to modern systems, Metal Gear Solid: The Legacy Collection on modern systems should be a no-brainer.