Remember that great-looking Unreal Engine 4 fan remake of Metal Gear Solid? Remember how you’ve spent every waking moment since it was announced dreading its unceremonious cancellation? Well, haha, about that...
The remake, which made ever our grumpiest Metal Gear skeptic, Luke Plunkett, go weak in the muscles he’s built up from years of playing soccer and avoiding non-lethal Australian animals, looked magnificent back in January.
Since then, development seemed to continue apace, and the dev team started teasing a “huge announcement” for March 14th. Today, they stopped teasing and started packing it in. A brief message on their Facebook page reads:
“We have an important announcement to make today: We have to cancel the Shadow Moses Project for reasons beyond our control. We would like to thank everyone for the tremendous support we have received.”
This is disappointing, but not exactly surprising. Ambitious fan remakes bite the big one in a way worthy of our best, “Snake? Snake?? SNAAAAAAAAAKE” all the time. For every Black Mesa or Skywind, there are tons of other fan projects that bleed team members and fade into obscurity or get Stern Warnings from the rights-owners of the games in question.
Given how well development seemed to be going, it definitely feels like outside interference played a role in the Shadow Moses Project’s demise. Granted, that is merely speculation on my part. I’ve reached out to Konami and the Shadow Moses team in hopes of learning more.
In the meantime, though, it’s worth noting the Shadow Moses team’s motivation for revealing the game in the first place. They explained in a post accompanying their debut trailer back in January:
“Konami owns the MGS copyright and therefore sooner or later we will need their full permission. We have therefore chosen to openly share this project from the beginning so that we can deal with any issues that may arise as they come. We believe this is better than putting years of work into a project only to get it shut down. Please, respect this decision.”
So... yeah :/
To contact the author of this post, write to nathan.grayson@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @vahn16.