Konami has clarified one key detail for Metal Gear Solid 3 Remake.
Which is to say, it isn’t actually called Metal Gear Solid 3 Remake. We should, in fact, be calling it Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater. Or at the very least, Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater.
Konami confirmed this official name with The Verge, but on Twitter, they provided more explanation. They stated:
“The Delta symbol (Δ) was chosen because its meaning fits the concept of the remake project.
Delta means “change” or “difference” without changing structure.
#MetalGearSolid
#MGSDelta”
Metal Gear’s entire naming convention has always been unconventional, all the way back when Konami first started the franchise, thanks to series creator Hideo Kojima. Kojima has a love of using names to reference other media, such as Dr. Strangelove and Deep Throat, as well as, well, names like Hot Coldman and Decoy Octopus.
In the lore of Metal Gear, the ridiculous names make sense, as every character has to use a codename in its quasi military, quasi espionage based setting.
Still, if you really think about it, it really is something else that Kojima got us used to saying words like Revolver Ocelot and Liquid Snake, without acknowledging that these names are complete word salad.
If anything, Metal Gear Solid Delta is somewhat more straightforward and direct than anything else. While the current Metal Gear team did have to explain the name change, there is something else they hadn’t explained that does have fans buzzing.
Obviously, they removed the 3 from Metal Gear Solid 3. What did they mean by this? For folks who have not played these games, Metal Gear Solid 3 should really be the first game in the timeline. It features the story of Naked Snake, the father and main antagonist of Solid Snake.
31 years before the first Metal Gear game, Naked Snake is thrust in the middle of fictional Cold War events, and acts to avoid war brewing between the US and the Soviet Union. That’s as much as I’ll leak here, but I will also add that many of the characters introduced here were not revealed in previous Metal Gear games. Kojima would then pay that off by explaining why those characters and events were relevant in the game that immediately followed this, Metal Gear Solid 4.
We all know very well why Kojima is no longer working on Konami. However, when he left, his work on Metal Gear Solid: The Legacy Collection didn’t really fulfill its mission. It failed to tie together the Metal Gear timeline to a satisfying degree.
Konami’s staff now may have decided a soft or hard reboot is what’s needed to really clean up that timeline. This name change would be a possible first step in such a plan. We don’t know what Konami has in store for Metal Gear’s future but it will surely be interesting to find out.
Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater will be released on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Windows via Steam.
