Metal Gear Solid remastered?
Before you start jumping for joy and desperately look for where to buy this jewel, we must wake you up from your dream and warn you that we are simply facing the remastering of the game’s presentation trailer, a video that premiered at the E3 of the year 2000 and that became the history of video games.
The trailer in question left all fans and the industry hallucinating thanks to a large number of details that only Hideo Kojima could have in mind at the time. The first thing that was surprising is that it was rendered in real time, thus showing the potential of PlayStation 2 before the console hit stores. The game of cameras, the lighting effects and environmental destruction proving that the game was at a level never seen before.
The trailer so marked the moment and became so popular that Konami decided to release a commemorative DVD in Japan that included the 9 minutes of content that drove fans crazy, and it is precisely that content that Digital Foundry has used for their experiment.
Improving graphics with artificial intelligence
With the help of software Topaz Video Enhance AIDigital Foundry has managed to rescale the original 480i source to astonishing 4K at 60 frames per second, and the results have been pretty good overall. There are details such as the texts or the fixed elements of the interface that have been perfectly improved, although others such as Yoji Shinkawa’s artistic sketches look much worse due to the complexity of their strokes.
It must be taken into account that, having a resolution of 480 interpolated linesWe’re actually talking about a 240-line native image, so the jump to 4K is even more surprising.
Is the future in the hands of an artificial intelligence?
The thinking behind this experiment is pretty clear. Considering how artificial intelligence systems are advancing, it is easy to think that sooner or later they will replace human labor in many respects. Coincidentally, Kojima himself raised this approach the same day that Digital Foundry published this peculiar analysis, pointing out that one day the software will take care of making the remastered versions without human help.
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AI is restoring paintings, archival photos and videos, and colorizing them. The day will come when AI will be in charge of making old games high-resolution, 60fps, etc. In that day, AI will learn daily as hardware is upgraded, and software will be upgraded automatically. pic.twitter.com/kEd8W7TeBV– HIDEO_KOJIMA (@HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN) August 15, 2021
This context is undoubtedly extremely possible, and it is that with results like those of this remastered trailer, anything is possible. As indicated in Digital Foundry, the results would have to be seen if artificial intelligence were taught exclusively with information and video game samples. Would the result be better? Quite possibly.
Original trailer in DVD quality:
