Konami is slowly sharing more details about Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, and it’s not sounding exactly like what some fans were expecting. The game will indeed be using the original voice cast, but it won’t be recording any of their performances. The PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC game will be sticking with old voice work.
“The remake will star the original voice characters,” stated the game’s initial press release. This gave some players the impression that the original cast would return to provide fresh performances for the new version. Later, the official Metal Gear Twitter account wrote, “The story and character voices in Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater remain the same from the original game.” That implied that the “next-gen” game would simply reuse the material from the PlayStation 2 original.
Sure enough, Konami has now finally confirmed exactly that. “Essentially it’s saying the story and character voices in Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater will remain as they were in the original game,” a spokesperson for the publisher told Kotaku. Konami was even more direct with The Verge, stating there would be no changes from the original voice work.
For some fans, this is no doubt a good thing. There’s no better way not to mess with the iconic lines and performances of the original than to just copy them over. In the case of the recent Resident Evil 4 remake, some roles were recast, leading diehards to be disappointed with some of the differences.
But it does add to the growing sense that there’s just something off about the Snake Eater remake. We still don’t really know what will be different about it, other than improved graphics and more realistic crocodiles. There’s no projected release year yet. And nobody’s quite sure who’s leading the project…only that Metal Gear Solid series creator Hideo Kojima is definitely not involved.
Port and outsource studio Virtuous is assisting Konami, but who’s left at Konami with experience making a Metal Gear game, let alone a remake of one of the most beloved ones? I’m sure we’ll find out eventually. Maybe at Sony’s 2025 PlayStation’s Showcase.