Denis Dyack, former president of Silicon Knights, has recently opened up to how he and his team became involved with the remake of Hideo Kojima’s critically acclaimed 1998 stealth title Metal Gear Solid on the Nintendo GameCube.
During an interview on IGN’s Nintendo podcast, Dyack explained how the project was “similar to the Eternal Darkness [Sanity’s Requiem] pitch,” as “it was a game that I had no idea we were going to do until I left Nintendo.”
Dyack added how legendary developer Shigeru Miyamoto and Nintendo president Satoru Iwata approached him with the project whilst he was eating his lunch in a Nintendo cafeteria in Japan, who was initially perplexed at how Nintendo could develop a title that was published by Konami. However, Miyamoto told him how he and Hideo Kojima had been discussing the idea of the title being remade on a Nintendo system.
“And I was just talking to Mr. Kojima and we’ve been talking for a while, and we would love to do a Metal Gear game on the Nintendo system, but he’s too busy with Metal Gear [Solid] 3 [Snake Eater],” he said. “I wish we could do it, but we just don’t have the manpower. But then I had this idea Denis that you could be the manpower.”
Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes was released on the Nintendo GameCube in 2004 with improved visuals, mechanics adopted from Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and changed cutscenes, and Dyack said “he was terrified” at what Ryuhei Kitamura, the Japense filmmaker brought on to direct the cutscenes, would do to them for two reasons: the production values and response from the fans.
“On the cutscenes, they’re very, very productions values is extremely high,” says Dyack, before adding, “In Eternal Darkness we hadn’t come close to anything like flips or jumping on missiles [in The Twin Snakes].
“And then the other thing was how the Metal Gear fans gonna respond, because until then it was a kind of more realistic.”
You can check out the full interview with Denis Dyack on Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes over at IGN.