ANNOUNCER: Ratings for games in this podcast are pending.
[XBOX SOUND]
MALIK PRINCE: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to The Official Xbox Podcast, the only podcast coming to you from inside Xbox. And all this week, we are diving deep into games you've seen at the Xbox Game Showcase. And if you've missed one from earlier in this week, don't worry, definitely check out Youtube.com/Xbox, Spotify, or wherever you download your podcasts.
But maybe hold on a second, because we've got a very special show and a very special guest to today's episode, which is all about Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater. But before we get into it, let me introduce to you my co-host for the day, the-- I got to get this title right-- the tactical espionage action expert, Jeff Rubenstein. Jeff, How's it going?
JEFF RUBENSTEIN: It's good. When you get to write what your own title is going to be, you can put anything you want in the prompter as it turns out without having to back it up.
MALIK PRINCE: And you wrote-- well, let's see. Do you have the credentials? What are your credentials for that?
JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I remember going as a kid next door to my neighbor Andy's house. He had the original Metal Gear on NES, and then I started playing MGS3-- or the original MGS. When it first came out. But MGS3 is my favorite. So I'm very excited to be here. Plus, I was born in the year of the snake, so I feel like I'm eminently qualified to be sitting here in this chair.
MALIK PRINCE: It all just works. It works. We're going to take that. And we're going to approve you for that one. But Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater was announced just about a year ago, actually. And we've now seen three trailers.
They announced one for May of last year, one at the Xbox Partner Preview, which is awesome. And that was the first in-engine look at the game. And now with the Xbox Game Showcase, of course, this past weekend, and there's a lot to talk about.
So we're honored to welcome Producer Noriaki Okamura into the studio. Okamura-san, thank you so much for joining us. Can you please introduce yourself for everyone and share your history with Konami and Metal Gear?
NORIAKI OKAMURA (INTERPRETED): Hello, I'm Noriaki Okamura with Konami Digital Entertainment. I've been with Konami for a little over 30 years. And I'm currently the series producer on the Metal Gear Series. I've been involved with a number of Metal Gear titles. And I was also a producer for Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops and Metal Gear Solid: Bande Dessinée.
Now, after about 10 years, I'm back and overseeing the Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol 1, which came out last year, as well as Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, which we all just saw the new trailer for. The series was pretty quiet for a while. And as a result, we started seeing new players who didn't really know about Metal Gear. You can go online and people are saying, what's Metal Gear? We decided we wanted to fix that.
All of us on the Metal Gear team are really dedicated to making sure that Metal Gear is still around for the future. So everyone keep on enjoying it. We look at that as kind of our mission. That was what led us to making these games and to bringing Metal Gear back into action.
JEFF RUBENSTEIN: Okamura-san, thank you so much for joining us here all the way from Japan. So let's get into it. It's not unusual for previous generation games to make their way into modern devices. We see this pretty frequently. And they're usually actually very popular.
Now, normally in the title, we'll see a word like "remaster" or "remake." But here you've chosen the delta character. So do you consider Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater to be a remake, a remaster, or something else entirely?
NORIAKI OKAMURA (INTERPRETED): Well, Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater is more than just a remaster. This is a remake of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, which first came out in 2004. We're keeping everything about the story and the game world, but we've rebuilt it with cutting-edge graphics and 3D sound.
[HELICOPTER BLADES THRUMMING]
Which really enhances the jungle environment and makes this the ultimate survival stealth action experience.
MALIK PRINCE: And is there any additional meaning to having "delta" in the title that we should be thinking about?
NORIAKI OKAMURA (INTERPRETED): Delta is a Greek letter. And the original meaning is something like change or difference, but it also means to change the quantity of something without changing the composition or character. That's the core concept for the title. Not different, but more. So we chose to represent that in the title.
JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So it is wild to me to think that Metal Gear Solid 3 was first released 20 years ago. That's three generations ago. Of course, game engines and consoles have come a very long way since then. I remember playing Metal Gear Solid 3 originally on the PS2 on a 26-inch CRT TV.
My TV is now 65-inch 4K, HDR. Things have come a long way. So visuals, we expect, are going to be a pretty big focal point here. So I'd love to hear what you're doing with Unreal Engine 5.
NORIAKI OKAMURA (INTERPRETED): We've been putting a ton of effort into the visuals of the jungle area that make up a lot of the game. We really want them to look and feel like totally overgrown, wet, humid, environments. We've also created a much more realistic models for the plants and animals you'll encounter there that can become fuel for Snake and stepped up the realism of the wounds you can get or the mud you'll get covered in. So you'll really feel the harshness of this environment and your mission there. So definitely try it on your big screen. It's going to look great in 4K.
MALIK PRINCE: Yeah, and I actually have a similar question about the audio. Obviously, people are playing with much higher quality headsets or sound systems than they did in 2004. And Metal Gear Solid 3's music and voice performances are iconic, whether it's like the theme song, David Hayter's gravelly voice that we all know, of course,
- Commencing Virtuous Mission now.
MALIK PRINCE: Were you able to work any magic with the original master recordings or did you bring anyone back into the studio? And is there anything that you weren't able to do with the game back then that you can do with Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater?
NORIAKI OKAMURA (INTERPRETED): We're using all the original voice performances, but there are some lines where characters teach you the controls that really don't match anymore. So we actually did get the original actors to re-record just those. Plus, back then, 20 years ago, we actually had to compress the voice acting down a lot to fill all that audio. Today, we aren't as limited. We don't have to compromise as much on formats and compression, so we can actually have those performances in even higher quality.
- Your codename for this mission will be Naked Snake. I'll be referring to you as Snake from now on.
NORIAKI OKAMURA (INTERPRETED): We've also expanded the compatible audio options, so you can go with the original 2 channel sound or up to 7.1 channel audio.
JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I do love that you brought some folks back into the studio to re-record those particular parts. So what else are you looking at besides the sights and the sounds when it comes to modernizing a classic like this? I remember Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence had a new sort of control link and camera mode that was more modernized. Some people preferred that. Did you look at the controls again here?
NORIAKI OKAMURA (INTERPRETED): Playability and controls are key to any action game. So we also gave that side of things a lot of care in the remake. We've come up with ways to rework the camera and the action to be more comfortable by modern standards. So if you're more used to a contemporary third-person style, you can pick up and play Delta right away.
But of course, we had the option for everyone to choose their preferred style. You can use a more contemporary over-the-shoulder viewpoint, which we call New Style or we have Legacy Style with overhead camera like the original, allowing you a view of your surroundings, so you can stick to the shadows and plan your moves. Legacy Style also applies a visual filter to more faithfully recreate the screen look of the original game.
MALIK PRINCE: Yeah, and those are questions that we've been wondering even before this week when you dropped the trailer at the showcase. So there's a lot to dig into. But for players who maybe haven't played Metal Gear Solid 3 or need a quick refresher, can you tell us a little bit about the story?
NORIAKI OKAMURA (INTERPRETED): This game tells the origin story of Big Boss, who becomes a driver of the story across the rest of the Metal Gear series. It takes place in 1964, the Cold War, deep in the jungle, you play as a man who will one day become Big Boss, an agent codenamed Naked Snake.
The game begins with an operation named Virtuous Mission, where Snake's mission is to infiltrate Soviet territory alone and rescue a defecting Soviet scientist. It's where the whole epic saga of Metal Gear begins. So even if you're new to the series, you can start here without worrying about missing anything.
MALIK PRINCE: Yeah, and like you said, Metal Gear Solid 3 chronologically takes place before the other games in the series. Is that why you chose to make this game first rather than Metal Gear Solid 1 or 2.
NORIAKI OKAMURA (INTERPRETED): That's right. We stepped back and took a look at the story across the entire series, and we decided it made the most sense to start with MGS3, the origin of Big Boss and where so many threads for the rest of the series stem from.
JEFF RUBENSTEIN: So we're getting our look in this trailer-- our first looks really at characters like Big Boss or Major Zero. And again, the fidelity is so much better now. It's really awesome to see. I went back and I was looking at old videos. And so I would just love to know what the process was to make such a leap. Did you go back and look at-- did you look at later games in the series like MGS5 or did you look at original concept art or other source material in order to advance this facial animation so much?
NORIAKI OKAMURA (INTERPRETED): One of the things people love about Metal Gear Solid are the characters like the Boss. We had to leave all the nuances and touches that we like about these characters while carrying over their designs in a way that works for a contemporary title. We made countless improvements and updates to the character models in Delta to make sure that characters from MGS3 could be made detailed enough that they would fit right in if we stood them side by side with characters from, for example, MGS5.
And I do want to highlight the improved facial animation details as well. We found that just facial capture wasn't enough to create the same kind of expressive performances people remember from the original cutscenes. So a lot of the expressions are fine tuned by hand.
JEFF RUBENSTEIN: There's so many characters. I can't wait to see what they look like now. And so that leads me to this question. A lot of people, including me, are very excited to get their hands on the controls. They want to play this game. So can you tell us when Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater will be released, Okamura-san?
NORIAKI OKAMURA (INTERPRETED): [CHUCKLES]
Sorry, but we can't give you an exact window yet, but please stay tuned for future announcements.
JEFF RUBENSTEIN: We had to ask.
MALIK PRINCE: You miss 100% of the shots you don't take, right? But Okamura-san, thank you so much for joining us. Players are super excited to play the game. Any final thoughts for people who are excited players, fans of the series?
NORIAKI OKAMURA (INTERPRETED): Whether you're a fan of the original or Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater will be your first experience with the Metal Gear series, we think the game is going to offer plenty of joy for everyone. We'll have more to share on Delta in the future, so we hope you'll look forward to hearing more about it then.
MALIK PRINCE: Awesome. Awesome. Well, that about wraps it up for today's Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater episode of The Official Xbox Podcast. But we've got plenty more for you this week. Here's the schedule we're looking at.
And we're looking forward to welcoming more guests and developers from around Xbox. So make sure to join us back here tomorrow. And in the meantime, check out anything you may have missed earlier in the week on Youtube.com/Xbox and on podcast services by searching for "Xbox Podcast." Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks, Jeff.
JEFF RUBENSTEIN: I would not have missed this for anything.
MALIK PRINCE: Of course not. We'll catch you next time.
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