Screenshot: Konami / oct0xor / Kotaku
I’m obligated to report that Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons Of Liberty is over 20 years previous. I’ll not wish to take into consideration that, however right here we’re. The unique visible aesthetic has a beautiful PS2-era allure that I feel has grow to be relatively endearing in its age. But that hasn’t stopped one modder from altering up the sport’s digital camera to mirror extra trendy third-person requirements, thus giving an entire new perspective on the sport’s environments (and Raiden’s butt, duh).
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The unique Metal Gear Solid 2 was in third individual, however it used a extra basic “overhead” or “fixed” digital camera perspective, like the primary MGS earlier than it and the unique launch of MGS3 that adopted. Using the GOG model of the sport (which was sadly pulled lastl yr resulting from everybody’s nemesis: copyright) modder Boris “oct0xor” Larin needed to “reverse engineer and rewrite many things in the game engine” to permit for the extra trendy operate of shifting the digital camera across the character freely. Larin launched the mod through GitHub a couple of days in the past (however you’ll want the aforementioned PC model that’s at the moment in limbo). Given that the unique sport by no means had this operate, this permits for views on these environments that had been merely unattainable earlier than. Check out the premiere trailer right here:
Konami / oct0xor
With a sport as ol…ahem, vintaged as MGS2, this seemingly wasn’t a straightforward activity. Fortunately, for these of us curious in regards to the work that went into this mission, Larin has supplied a 20-plus minute dev diary of the mission. Check it out, it’s completely Metal Gear-themed and is a enjoyable watch.
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According to the video, the concept got here to Larin very naturally, “I was playing MGS2 [and] I caught myself constantly thinking: What if this game had the same 3rd-person camera like in MGS3?”
While the unique MGS3 launch had a hard and fast digital camera, its enhanced follow-up launch, Subsistence, contained the at-the-time extra experimental rotatable digital camera to help with the sequence’ new on-line mode. It turned customary for all foremost MGS titles shifting ahead. But MGS2 has all the time stored the unique fixed-camera perspective.
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Enabling a moveable digital camera in MGS2 required excess of merely clicking a checkbox buried in a bit of software program someplace. Larin needed to “replace all existing camera-related code” with unique code based mostly off of the texture of the third-person digital camera in MGS3: Subsistence. That, too, wasn’t so simple as slapping some new code into the sport. In their dev diary, Larin mentions that they needed to “reverse engineer how the game controls work,” whereas overhauling how the “player’s position and direction” is calculated. Unfortunately, doing so launched quite a lot of new bugs and quirks which required fixing, reminiscent of character motion needing to comply with the course of the brand new digital camera, as an alternative of the “fixed coordinate system” that dictates instructions for the character in any other case.
Collision with partitions is one other difficult challenge famous within the dev diary, as when carried out instantly, an adjustable digital camera can simply break by partitions. Cool for an episode of Boundary Break, however not the very best for somebody trying to have a extra secure gameplay expertise.
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As somebody who spent many, many hours of her youth taking part in MGS2, it’s fairly cool to see the Big Shell from these angles, and I think about it makes the sport a lot simpler to play. If you haven’t performed the unique in a while, it’s undoubtedly a kind of video games that reminds you of its age rapidly while you instinctually transfer the fitting thumbstick to search out the digital camera received’t orbit your character.