Konami has revealed the first in-engine trailer of Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater.
The trailer is a demonstration of the abilities of Unreal Engine 5, the engine that this remake is being built upon. The strongest elements of the trailer, as you can imagine, are the environmental effects.
Layers of foliage, formations of rock, textures of caiman skin, all are very impressively detailed and look more realistic than they have ever been.
Konami made it a point to highlight some specific in-game environments to show off the engine’s capabilities to its full effect. We get to see Snake’s body caked in mud. We see from the distance the light reflections on a deep river below a high bridge.
One very impressive scene shows the inside of a cave. While there is a light source from a hole above, the water below creates reflections of light that reflect on the cave’s ceiling, and the plant roots that hang onto it.
Other scenes show light refracting on the water’s edge where a crab walks across, and a frog visibly swimming below the surface, with leaves on the water’s surface itself. We can only see the frog, again, because of reflected light from above.
We aren’t shown much on the gameplay side, and that would obviously be intentional because changing this system is potentially controversial. Konami may opt to do what Capcom did for the Resident Evil Revelations series; where the players are given the choice between classic tank controls or modern twin stick controls. Or, Konami may opt to go all in on modern control schemes, once again copying how Capcom has handled their remakes of the classic Resident Evil games.
On a personal note, one weakness Unreal can have, that Tekken Project also struggled it in their transition with the engine, is rendering faces. Bandai Namco’s team has successfully transitioned to Unreal with Tekken 8, but many fans are also quick to point out how anemic their characters appeared when they first learning Unreal in Tekken 7.
In a similar way, Snake is recognizable in this in-engine footage, but he certainly looks a little off. Not everyone may see a clear difference; after all we spend most of the Metal Gear games seeing the games from Snakes’ eyes (all of them) instead of seeing Snake’s face head-on. But if you’re a fan who’s familiar with Unreal, you may notice the sameness of this early Snake.
So we would say that Konami has shown a lot of promising things in this first preview, but they still have a way to go before fans will be satisfied with what they have done. Many of Kojima’s older staffers who worked on Metal Gear are still in Konami today. We hope they are working to make this remake the best that it can be, and reintroduce Snake properly to a new generation of gamers.
Metal Gear Solid Δ: Snake Eater is planned for release on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Windows via Steam. You can watch the trailer below.
