Delta impressions thread

[squallman1]

So I’ve been playing since the early release and I’m extremely impressed with what Konami have done with this remake. The graphics especially are unreal and the game does feel good on performance mode. 

My only issues so far are;

• Enemies FOV are crazy good. Not sure if it’s because of “improved AI” or they wanted to make it harder, but my god is it hard to be stealthy. Even trying to sneak CQC is ridiculous because you get seen/heard anyway. 
  
• The new style camera is awful. Makes finding enemies really difficult and it’s so slow to turn too. I’ve not looked in settings to see if it can be changed/adjusted in anyway but yeah, I’m not a fan.
  
• I just wish they used the Fox Engine - so much better than UE5 by miles. 
  

Apart from the above, I’m genuinely having fun with it and I’m looking forward to doing more playthroughs.

[Aragorn]

WE IN HERE BOYS collector edition just arrived can’t wait to play

[Departed]

[*]The new style camera is awful. Makes finding enemies really difficult and it’s so slow to turn too. I’ve not looked in settings to see if it can be changed/adjusted in anyway but yeah, I’m not a fan.
[*]I just wish they used the Fox Engine - so much better than UE5 by miles. 

[*]
The camera setting can be changed in controls.  There's camera sensitivity and aim sensitivity.  Its default setting is 1.  I recommend setting both to 1.5 or 2, but the latter is a little too fast.  It plays so much better with the faster camera.  That's actually another big mark for the game.  The control adjustments are the most accommodating that I've ever seen from a Metal Gear game, letting you tailor it to feel as comfortable to play as possible.

I loved the Fox Engine as well and wish they kept it.  I think Konami sold it several years ago unfortunately.

So far, I just defeated The Fear, which was always one of my favorite bosses in the original MGS3.  Fighting him with TPS felt so good, and being able to dance around with him briefly when he was on the ground was really gratifying.  Just like with the normal game, I always wear his health down until he loses enough stamina so I can plant TNT near some rotten food, blowing him up after he eats it, and when he threw up afterwards, I finished him off with a shotgun blast.  

So far, all of the bosses have played better than ever.  All the tricks I had with the original game are still present here, but there's a little more of a snappy quality to the gunplay having properly intuitive controls now.

[Dirty Duck]

I loved the Fox Engine as well and wish they kept it.  I think Konami sold it several years ago unfortunately.

Damn really? Selling an engine never even crossed my mind as something that could be done, but of course it’s just an asset at the end of the day. Has anything been made on it besides MGSV and Survive, by Konami or whoever bought it?

[Aragorn]

The game that there is a crouch walk and an actual functioning aiming system puts it leagues and miles above the original. Just by default.

Problem with FOX engine is Konami likely lost a lot of technical talent to maximize the output of the engine; and most importantly in the long run building and using your own engine just doesn’t make sense. When you need to add resources to a project having your own in-house technology means a steeper onboarding curve since you can’t exactly learn FOX engine on your own, and employee churn makes more strenuous since you’ll be be naturally bleeding out expertise.

Adopting a streamlined mass adoption engine means you have a ton of resources on hand to utilize off the gate, lots of publically available knowledge and a larger talent pool that can start running on day 1.

You might be able to offset the short and long term costs of engine development by licensing it and turning it into a revenue stream e.g DECIMA engine but it’s a longshot.

[Dirty Duck]

Aragorn stop talking about the real world we want to dream.

I’m eager to see what I think about the game visually when I play it myself. It’s very hard to put my finger on stuff like this but something about a lot of the visuals I’ve seen has felt slightly off, in a way that MGSV and Death Stranding didn’t despite the similarly realistic (or perhaps more so in Death Stranding’s case) art direction.

[NateDog]

Aragorn stop talking about the real world we want to dream.

I’m eager to see what I think about the game visually when I play it myself. It’s very hard to put my finger on stuff like this but something about a lot of the visuals I’ve seen has felt slightly off, in a way that MGSV and Death Stranding didn’t despite the similarly realistic (or perhaps more so in Death Stranding’s case) art direction.

I think the way Snake's movement looks really floaty is what has put me off a bit, I'm hoping that isn't the case when I play. I guess as well there are hugely spruced up character models when we've been so used to the old ones, and you have the combination of old audio with facial models from mocap sessions that are capable of displaying so much more than what was possible back when MGS3 came out so some cutscenes have a bit of an odd feel to them. 

I think it's the one big problem if you're doing a 1:1 remake in this manner. If we next get a full remake of MG+MG2:SS or MGS1 with newly recorded audio it'll be very different I'm sure.

[BULUPTAX]

I beat the game a little while ago. I fell in love with Snake Eater all over again.
There's a few gripes I had but it didn't stop me from really appreciating this remake. When I was going through it I kept comparing it to Twin Snakes. Twin Snakes wasn't all that good a remake to me because the redone voicework and music made it feel like a completely different experience for all the wrong reasons, and really took away what made MGS1 so special, even if the redone graphics and gameplay were solid (no pun intended).
With Delta I felt like they really preserved what made me love the game, so in my mind it's a great remake compared to Twin Snakes. Even though the visuals and gameplay are all shiny and new, underneath it's still the same game I feel in love with as a kid, and it made me feel young again

Now for the cons
My main problem was that the combat was so smooth that getting spotted wasn't a big deal since I could just mow down all the reinforcements with ease. Whereas in the original it really felt like you were fucked when you got an alert.

A lot of the boss fights were also way easier, I felt like I beat Volgin in less than 2 minutes because of how smooth the new shooting and CQC mechanics were. Thankfully my favourite boss fight in the game, The End, felt pretty much the same

[Kestrel]

Spoiler:

you could say I've been enjoying this game very, very much

[Departed]

It’s very hard to put my finger on stuff like this but something about a lot of the visuals I’ve seen has felt slightly off, in a way that MGSV and Death Stranding didn’t despite the similarly realistic (or perhaps more so in Death Stranding’s case) art direction.

I love the visuals of the game immensely, but the thing that I notice about Delta which Phantom Pain and DS didn't suffer from is UE5's lighting.  It all looks great, but there are little details that detract.  The hair on most characters feels a little off.  Sometimes, Ocelot looks like a blond, other times, like a young silver fox.  Snake's hair is a little too brown, like the contrast was dialed to where it looks like he dyed his hair crayon brown.  There's also that occasional UE5 hair shine which most AAA games suffer from, oddly, except KojiPro games.  

The other big thing is that Delta's animations are a blend of completely original stuff, which I think looks amazing, and both MGSV and MGS3 animations.  I think the animations that work best are Delta's original ones.  Having MGSV's animations for some movement feels a little off, because Phantom Pain's motion was looser and more fluid since you could sprint like a cheetah.  They also need to fix the weapons equipping animations.  It works if you're standing still, but when you're on the move, there's no transition animation, and it looks oddly amateurish for a game that looks, feels and plays so well.  Hopefully, that's something which can be fixed in a patch, but if not, it's not the end of the world and doesn't take away from how much fun I've been having with the game.

I'm doing my first run on the default color filter.  There's additional filters like Legacy Filter, which gives Delta the same color pallet as classic MGS3, where there's a slight tint that gave MGS3's art design a little bit of extra distinction.  I love how vibrant everything looks right now by default, but I'm gonna do my second run with the Legacy Filter and see which version I like better.

These are all just minor nitpicks at the end of the day for me.  I've had the dumbest grin on my face the whole time I've been playing the game, but there is always room for improvement in the finer details to make things come together in a more definitive way.