In a new interview, Konami revealed potentially disappointing news for players hoping for a Metal Gear Solid 4 Remake. According to the developer, MGS4 has difficult code that might make it hard to re-create.
We Might Not Be Getting a MGS4 Remake Anytime Soon
Following the recent launch of Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater, Konami’s Noriaki Okamura sat down for an interview to discuss the future of the Hideo Kojima franchise. During the conversation, the MGS Producer discussed which games they could make next. However, Okamura had an interesting response when the interviewer brought up the possibility of remaking Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.
According to Noriaki Okamura, a Metal Gear Solid 4 Remake might be difficult to do right now due to how the game was originally made. “The hardware at the time required some pretty special construction to deliver 3D performance with the technology available at the time. And MGS4 also had some pretty special code. It would be pretty hard to bring it up now (laughs).”
While this doesn’t rule out an MGS4 Remake, it doesn’t seem like it could happen anytime soon. Okamura also clarified that the team might even make new Metal Gear Solid games, and not only remakes. “We haven’t yet decided what we’ll be creating. There may be remakes, but we may also try new works. The Metal Gear series is like the history of video games, and it ranges from pixel art to cinematic expressions.”
Why is Metal Gear Solid 4 So Difficult to remake?
When the PlayStation 3 launched in 2006, it was notoriously difficult to develop games for. Without getting into super technical specifics (I’m not an expert by any means), the main culprit was the PS3’s Cell Chip Processor. At the time, it was considered groundbreaking technology. However, it became a nightmare for many game developers to make games for.
The simplest explanation is that it had a split memory architecture compared to the Xbox 360’s unified memory pool design. This is also a big reason why PS3 emulation has pretty much been abandoned, because many games from that era have complicated code that is a nightmare to port over. So when Noriaki Okamura says “special code” and “hardware challenges,” he’s likely referencing the PS3’s design hurdles.
Will a Metal Gear Solid 4 Remake Ever Happen?
All this to say, it would be a massive undertaking to bring Metal Gear Solid 4: The Sons of Patriots to a modern console like PlayStation 5. But never say never! The Metal Gear Solid producer didn’t flat-out say no.
But given the challenges around its original code, I doubt we will see an MGS4 Remake anytime soon, which might be disappointing news for many fans hoping to play Hideo Kojima’s iconic 2008 PS3 title.
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