I am obliged to report this Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty is over 20 years old. I might not want to think about it, but here we are. The original visual aesthetic has a wonderful PS2 era charm that I think has become quite endearing in its time. But that didn’t stop one modder from changing the game’s camera to reflect more modern third-person standards, giving a whole new perspective on the game’s surroundings (and Raiden’s butt, duh).
The original Metal Gear Solid 2 was in third person, but it used a more classic “overhead” or “fixed” camera perspective, like the first MGS before that and the original release of MGS3 that followed. With the GOG version of the game (which unfortunately retired last year because of everyone’s nemesis: copyright law) Modder Boris “oct0xor” Larin had to “reverse engineer and rewrite a lot of things in the game engine” to enable the more modern feature of freely moving the camera around the character. larin published the mod via GitHub a few days ago (but you need the PC version mentioned above which is currently pending). Since the original game never had this feature, this allows for perspectives on these environments that were simply impossible before. Check out the premiere trailer here:
With a game as ol…ahem, vinified as MGS2, which was probably not an easy task. Luckily, for those of us who are curious about the work that went into this project, Larin has made something available a 20+ minute developer diary of the project. Try it, it’s perfect metal gears– themed and is a fun watch.
According to the video, the idea came naturally to Larin: “I played MGS2 [and] I caught myself thinking what if this game had the same 3rd person camera as in MGS3?”
While the original MGS3 The release had a fixed camera, its extended sequel release, livelihood, included the then more experimental rotating camera to support the series’ new online mode. It became the standard for all the important ones MGS title forward. but MGS2 has always retained the original fixed camera perspective.
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Enable a moveable camera in MGS2 required far more than just clicking a checkbox hidden somewhere in software. Larin had to replace “all existing camera-related code” with the original code based on the feel of the third-person camera MGS3: Subsistence. Even that wasn’t as easy as hammering a new code into the game. In her dev diary, Larin mentions that they had to “reverse engineer how the game controls work” while revising how the “player’s position and direction” is calculated. Unfortunately, this resulted in a host of new bugs and quirks that had to be fixed, such as: B. Character movement must follow the direction of the new camera, rather than the “fixed coordinate system” that otherwise dictates the character’s direction.
Colliding with walls is another challenging issue mentioned in the dev diary, as an adjustable camera can easily break through walls when implemented directly. Cool for an episode of border breachbut not the best for someone who wants a more stable gaming experience.
As someone who played many, many hours of his youth MGS2, it’s pretty cool to see the Big Shell from these angles and I imagine it makes the game a lot easier to play. If you haven’t played the original in a while, it’s definitely one of those games that quickly reminds you of its age as you instinctively flick your right thumbstick to realize the camera isn’t circling your character.
