Delta impressions thread

[starschwar]

Finished up my first playthrough. I have a lot of mixed feelings about the gameplay, but with the Kerotans and Gakos out of the way, I think maybe I'll really properly get a feel for sneaking next time through. I noticed a lot of little things with the gameplay - small quirks and bugs that were always there, replicated. Stuff like being able to open the item menu during Volgin's interrogation for no reason. I'm only just realizing how much of this game is likely literally running on the original code in some capacity. That's probably why the credits list the original programmers, etc. I think that might explain why there's so many performance issues across the board. I think this is less of a remake so much as a new graphics engine and a bunch of modern features grafted onto twenty year old code, or perhaps the other way around.


I adore the presentation. Over twenty years later, that ending still brings a tear to my eye. However, "You are above even The Boss. I hereby award you the title of Big Boss." - that might be the single worst line of dialogue in the entire series.

I had unlocked enough Secret Theater stuff to see two of the three new ones. The first feels right in place with the originals, this new team has the right sense of humor. The second one - it's hilarious, and so very dark. There's a point where I realized what was about to happen and just could not stop laughing. This one is on par with the very best of the original batch! I really hope this feature returns for all future remakes. Screwing around with cutscenes and pre-existing dialogue to create beautiful nonsense is delightful.


While I tolerated the sentence splicing for tutorial dialogue, I noticed one that made it into an actual story line. When Volgin lists countries, "Australia" is now chopped to "Austria". I assume this was to correct a translation error. It's better than using an AI, but I can't help but wonder if getting the voice actor back would have been better. Twenty years can wreck havoc on vocal cords, no doubt. One thing's for sure: If they remake MGS1 again, the coma line invented by the English translation is going away once and for all.


It's too early for me to give a definitive review/grade. I should have really just done a "play it as though I were doing a casual run" approach rather than trying to collect so much the first time through. Snake Eater is my favorite single player game of all time (The Matrix Online wins overall). The presentation and Quality of Life features added to Delta are top notch, and its faithfulness is certainly appreciated. I was only really getting over my decades-old muscle memory near the end. I'll say that, if fans are still on the fence about this, they should probably wait for a sale. It's a beautiful game, but it's still, at its core, still the same game. With the performance issues and so on, some patches will eventually come and smooth things out.

In a vacuum, would I recommend this to a newcomer over the previous versions? Probably. The PS2 Subsistence is mostly timeless, but playing a 480i game that demands pressure sensitive controls in 2025 is a tall order. The PS3 HD collection has too many compromises, and only for 720p. Master Collection on PC with fan fixes for graphics and audio - it's a great way to experience Snake Eater. But the way they made up for the lack of pressure sensitive buttons with the left stick feels really strange. Delta is probably the definitive version. I just need to bring my muscle memory kicking and screaming into the 2020s.



EDIT:

Wait. All the "old" secret theater videos are just the ones from Subsistence with ugly filters thrown over them?! I feel like my efforts have been wasted. I'm glad they came back, and remaking them probably would have been a huge drain on resources. But the difficulty in unlocking them... I feel a little cheated, here!