Everything being 1:1 is such a buzzkill. You had the chance to improve on environmental and level design, yet you chose to straight up copy a PS2 era game. Thank god Capcom take the same approach with Resident Evil 2 and 4.
It's a give-or-take situation IMO.
If Konami had Virtuos remake it completely (which it looks like they chose
not to do,) it would have been nearly impossible to capture the Kojima touches to level design and balance that MGS3 strikes so carefully. Nobody has made a stealth-action game like MGS1-3 (even if some people prefer Thief or Hitman or something else like that, even detractors of Metal Gear would know that there's a certain structure and forethought to MGS which isn't replicated elsewhere.) Whatever Virtuos would have had to do to make it fully open-world or seamlessly linear (instead of screen-cutting to each small area, which I assume is still the concept) or expanding levels or adding content or changing the perspective would have severed it from what people liked about the original game as it was... Maybe they would have been successful reimaging it (Capcom did it twice with RE2/3,) but what would be the chances of Virtuos improving on in-its-prime Kojima Productions?
If Konami had Virtuos change the graphics but leave the gameplay exactly as is as much as possible (which it looks like they chose for the game's direction,) it would come off as an old game, but at least it'd be a brilliant old game. Everything that earned MGS3 perfect-10s back in the day would be the same, just with graphics that kids today might object to less... but, will those kids instead object to it
feeling old even though it doesn't
look old, once they play the game and see the tiny stage areas and arch rulesets of blocky movements and fussy camo switching and everything else that makes MGS3 clearly a PS2-era game?
...If this remake were able to switch back and forth between graphics, you'd at least have the best of both worlds for a faithful remake. However, I doubt they'll be running both engines concurrently like Bluepoint does (albeit even Bluepoint doesn't emulate the old graphics. Plus even if Virtuos had some kind of emulation shell inside UE5 for MGS3Delta, they're still doing some additional remaster work beyond just swapping assets. Not to mention, you'd be paying full-price for a single game already on collection packages.)