KEPT YOU WAITING, HUH?

Can METAL GEAR SOLID DELTA: SNAKE EATER make the fanbase whole again?

- Joshua Wolens

It’s all a little bit Metal Gear: the same basic story with some of the characters swapped out.

Twenty-one years ago, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater released to a divided fanbase, still roiling in its reaction to the then-controversial, now-classic Metal Gear Solid 2.

They didn’t like the switcheroo. They wanted to be Solid Snake; they got Raiden. They wanted a high-tech spy thriller; they got a bizarre meditation on information in the age of the internet. They wanted Mei Ling and her big book of apropos quotes; they got Rose and her constant needling about emotional distance and the significance of tomorrow’s date - which was April 30, in case you forgot. They got something they didn't sign up for, and it left them feeling frustrated, hoodwinked.

MGS 3 pulled it all back together, and it even did it without giving fans what they thought they wanted. You still weren’t Solid Snake, the spy thriller was decidedly low-tech, and rather than a continuation of the tale set up in MGS 1 it pitched us all the way back to 1964 and the, um, sweltering jungles of Russia. But it worked. Players loved it, and even those who adored MGS 2 found something to treasure in the third game’s personal tale of a spy on a quest to kill the person he loves most in the world.

Two decades on and here we are again, with a fanbase fractured by the fracas surrounding Metal Gear Solid 5. They lament its missing chapters, its strange twists, its retcons, the absence of series mainstay David Hayter as the English voice of Snake, but most of all they lament the events surrounding it: the acrimonious departure of Hideo Kojima – a name still synonymous with the Metal Gear series he created ten years after he left - from Konami. Can Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater pull off the same trick again, and reunite a scattered fanbase?