Hideo Kojima would love to see a remake of Metal Gear Solid that uses his company’s Fox Engine. He might not ever have guessed it, but the Oddworld HD team Just Add Water is up for the job.
The developer of Stranger’s Wrath HD and the upcoming remake Oddworld: New ‘N’ Tasty (based on the first Oddworld title, Abe’s Oddysee) wrote an open letter to Kojima today on its blog. Just Add Water wants to convince Kojima that it can do “justice” to Metal Gear Solid, one of the earliest installments in Konami’s popular action-stealth series Metal Gear.
We’ve reached out to Just Add Water for comment on what it would envision for the remake.
Just Add Water listed three main reasons why it’s qualified: “We have experience working with legendary IP [Oddworld Inhabitants] and treating the subject matter with the respect it deserves,” “many members of our team are huge Metal Gear fans, with very good knowledge of the source material,” and “we really, really want to do it.”
@thelyndonray We wouldn’t offer if we weren’t sincere. We have some big fans here.
— JAW (Dev), Ltd. (@jawltd) June 27, 2013
This pitch came in response to Kojima’s clarification to a mistranslation made at a roundtable held during the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) this month. Gamereactor.eu reported that Kojima was looking for a third-party studio to remake the first two Metal Gear Solid titles implementing the Fox Engine, the cross-platform game engine that Kojima Productions is using to develop the next-gen title Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes. On Twitter, Kojima said the misinterpretation was “on our side” and wasn’t the journalist’s fault. Then he admitted that he would actually love to see a remake of the first game happen:
Well, if there’s some creator or team in this world who has love and passion to remake “MGS1”, I would love to ask for it.
— HIDEO_KOJIMA (@HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN) June 27, 2013
A remake obviously wouldn’t be up to Kojima alone or even his company, Kojima Productions, as Konami traditionally publishes the series. But Just Add Water thought it might as well try.
“We eagerly await your response,” it said.