NCE BITTEN, THRICE SNEAKY

We base-jump towards our first taste of Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, talking with series producer Noriaki Okamura about our hands-on with the remade Virtuous Mission section of the classic stealther.

The Cold War, the 1960s. An operative for the United States' newly established FOX (Force Operation X) is sent behind enemy lines to extract a scientist whose experiments are tipping the balance of power, and with it the world towards nuclear armageddon.

Naked Snake's alone in Soviet territory on this mission - and he looks suspiciously like Solid Snake, who starred in the first Metal Gear Solid many years later.

What do you mean, 'Who's Solid Snake?' You have got to be kidding.

But for series producer Noriaki Okamura, it's a very real concern and one that informs the developers' approach to remaking Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.

BOSS' WILL

"One of the things that really sparked us to do the remake in general is because we realised that a lot of the newer, younger generation of gamers aren't familiar with the Metal Gear series any more," says Okamura. "So it was basically our mission, our duty, to kind of continue making sure that the series lives on for future generations." After all, we leave behind much more than just DNA, as Solid Snake would say but again, who is Solid Snake? Okamura says the developers have made a deliberate choice to eschew the numbered titles used for the original series, and are focussing on rebuilding the third game as, chronologically, it's the first. "That's where the original story started," he says.