Konami’s announcement of Metal Gear Solid: The Master Collection Vol. 1 was both long-awaited and arrived with a few eyebrow-raising details. It won’t just include Metal Gear Solid 1 through 3, for example, but the earlier 2D games: including the non-canon game Kojima wasn’t involved in and apparently dislikes. The PC version’s Steam listing also popped up with the unwelcome news that the games would not include mouse and keyboard support, which seems rather bizarre (especially as there exists an old PC version of MGS which does have keyboard controls).
Now it looks like the publisher is slowly righting the ship, even if it’s not yet ready to make a public commitment to the default PC control scheme. At a recent Konami press event to hype up the collection, we spoke to Konami brand marketing director Ben Kinney, who addressed the issue without giving the firmest commitment:
“So there’s two thoughts there. The first one is, going back to the original gameplay experience, the games are designed to play on a controller. That’s how the [Master Collection] team thought of it. After seeing some of the feedback and the discussion around mouse and keyboard, that is something they’re thinking about as a larger discussion. But for now, the goal of the team really was the controller. They have seen that feedback, and that discussion is going on.
“I think we have a potential—maybe not for Volume 1, but I think that the devs are going to be considering and looking at that. But still staying true to the focus, these games really do need to be played on a controller. The mechanics, the way the games are designed, that’s really the goal. That balance is what the devs have to think about at all times.”
That doesn’t sound enormously promising, particularly in terms of timeframes, but then PCGamesN spoke to Céline Combelles, another senior brand manager for Metal Gear Solid at Konami, about the PC version. Combelles told the site that due to fan reaction around the news, the development team is now looking to include mouse and keyboard support for all the games in the collection.
Konami emphasises this is a work-in-progress, but the aim is for Metal Gear Solid and the earlier 2D titles to feature keyboard support (while MGS is 3D, it’s much more arcadey in feel than the later entries, and only features a static first-person viewer). MGS2 should have keyboard and limited mouse support, though what that means is unclear, while MGS3 will be all-singing all-dancing.
This complicates the mix but at least it shows Konami is listening, and there’s definitely an awareness that something needs doing. I’ll be playing with a pad anyway, as I imagine most players will, but it just seems like a basic feature for a remastered collection of games on PC to support the platform’s basic inputs. Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol.1 will release on October 24, 2023, and hopefully Vol. 2 won’t be too far behind. There’s also a remastered version of MGS3: Snake Eater on the way under the title Metal Gear Delta: Snake Eater.