Metal Gear Solid Delta Patch 1.21: PS5 Pro Improves, But Issues Remain

Metal Gear Solid Delta's August launch on PlayStation 5 consoles and PC did not necessarily bowl us over at Digital Foundry, with its PlayStation 5 Pro version in particular having a woeful outing: worse performance and worse image clarity than base PS5.

At the end of October, Konami delivered patch 1.21 for the game, which led us to re-test each version. Sadly, the few improvements we can report don't necessarily make up for a larger sense that the current console versions may never live up to either the PS2 original or the PS3 remake.

The best news comes for PS5 Pro owners, who get a new option to toggle either a "quality" mode or a 60 fps-targeting "performance" mode. The former nets a roughly 4-6 average fps gain over MGS Delta's previous default mode, while the latter ranges from a general 10 fps gain to as much as a 15 fps jump over patch 1.1.1, approaching a relatively consistent 60 fps refresh. In scenarios without AI reacting to your gameplay and running around on-screen, quality mode now generally clears the safe Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) threshold on compatible TVs (48-60 Hz).

However, some kind of CPU-limited bottleneck remains in place once enemy AI figures into PS5 Pro gameplay, easily dropping frame rates into the low 40 fps range. Having this happen when enemies emerge on-screen remains quite frustrating, and at this point, we're not confident the porting team at Virtuos can fix this issue. It could very well be the base Metal Gear Solid 3 code conflicts with Unreal Engine 5 running on top in enemy-filled moments.

(We've previously issued complaints that may sound familiar. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered is another Virtuos remaster that combines original game code with bolted-on Unreal Engine 5 code and assets, and to this day, it too struggles with frame time stutter on PCs and consoles alike.)

In measuring the fidelity of each MGS Delta mode on PS5, there is dynamic resolution scaling active in both, with quality mode measuring between 756p and 1152p before receiving PSSR upscaling, and performance mode clocking in a bit lower, between 720p and 1152p, before its own PSSR upscale pass. Like on patch 1.1.1, PSSR is the only option available, which can look blurry in still shots and clearer in motion compared to base PS5; once again, players don't get to pick whether they prefer PSSR or Unreal Engine's own TAAU. Quality mode retains nearly identical settings from what we saw on PS5 Pro on the last patch, while performance mode matches base PS5 settings.

On base PS5, there is a mild average uplift of roughly 3 fps since patch 1.1.1, which is welcome, if barely beyond a margin of error. And one 1.2.1 visual improvement on PS5 Pro, a fix to flickering Lumen Global Illumination (GI), does not make its way to base PS5.

Otherwise, we're left frustrated by some of Virtuos's decisions in the wake of this patch, including a lack of a 30 fps cap on PS5 Pro and a broken 30 fps cap on base PS5 that still features uneven frame pacing. On PC, while we welcome its new support for up to a 21:9 screen ratio, that ultrawide presentation does not extend to cut scenes (which a 21:9 community-made mod does enable, albeit with sometimes broken geometry or framing at the screen's edges).

As one brute force solution for PlayStation 5 consoles, we'd love to see those versions receive a 120 fps VRR mode, which would clean up frame time presentation on compatible TVs thanks to low frame-rate compensation (LFC). For now, we're pessimistic about Konami and Virtuos getting CPU-bound issues cleaned up, and the game's admittedly refreshed graphics still don't (in our opinion) pair well with the game's classic animations. Thus, our best recommendations are a bit clumsy: choosing the PC version with a high-end GPU and driver-level frame generation (or an actual DLSS frame-gen hack), to propel the game beyond its 60 fps cap on PCs, or lugging out original consoles to play Metal Gear Solid 3 on either PS2 or PS3 again.