There's a new trailer for Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater that shows off a wide range of the game's opening scenes, and it looks gorgeous and absolutely faithful to the 2004 original. But there's something about the old voice acting that comes through in the new ones. character models that feels a little strange.
Metal Gear Solid Delta reuses the voice acting from the original MGS3, so the entire installment of the line is just as it was in 2004. The original Snake Eater has one of the best set of vocal performances of all time, with only the combination of military elements. suspense drama and cheesy anime hijinks to make it all extremely memorable. David Hayter's performance as Snake is absolutely iconic for a reason.
But while Camp worked very well with the lightly stylized look of the PS2 original, it looks a lot more alien coming out of a bunch of modern, very realistic character models. Just take a look at the trailer below. Watch when Snake starts talking around the 0:43 mark. It's a little out of place, right?
Part of this is the lip syncing, which seemed a little strange even in 2004, due to the strangely minuscule mouth movements. But the effect is a thousand times more intense combined with the new character models, and extremely Anime lines like “he hasn't yet found an emotion to bring to battle” just don't play into this aesthetic the same way.
Some purists have worried from the beginning that Delta is losing some of the soul of the original, invoking the 'Nintendo, hire this guy' meme in reference to the realistic visual style. I'm not sure I agree, I'm really happy to see Konami working on Metal Gear in a way that seems to respect what people like, but it certainly seems like the new look will strike a balance in the field. and the drama is stranger than ever.
Metal Gear Solid developer Delta says they wanted it to be “almost too faithful” and explains why it's not called “a Hideo Kojima game.”