Metal Gear Solid 2, the masterpiece of stealth gaming from Death Stranding and PT director Hideo Kojima, introduces a new third-person mode based on Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence, more than 20 years after its original release.
Created by security researcher and modder Boris Larin, The Substance of Subsistence, or SOS, brings the free-form, over-the-shoulder third-person camera from the extended version of MGS3 to Metal Gear Solid 2. a new gaming experience, as well as a new take on iconic Kojima Productions environments. You may recall that the original Metal Gear Solid 2 used a partially movable but fixed camera, often limiting your view to far corners or a bird’s eye view. Lauren wants to change that. In an exclusive interview with PCGamesN, they talk about her initial inspirations and what got them through various development hurdles.
“I played MGS games over the Christmas and New Year holidays,” they explain, “and as I played MGS2, I kept thinking: what if this game had the same third-person camera as MGS3?” I thought, “If MGS2 had a camera like this, that would be great.” After getting this idea, I closed the game and started looking at its code.
“I wanted to have a camera that worked exactly like MGS3, but that game never came out on PC, so I also had to reverse engineer the code for the PS2 and PS Vita versions, which is more difficult. Also, on rare occasions, developers ship their games with debug symbols that contain function names and other information. It helps a lot with reverse engineering, and I’ve spent time researching this information on various editions of MGS games. Unfortunately, the debugging symbols were never included. However, the fans of MGS motivated me to continue working and I worked there on weekends and in my spare time during the summer.”
Estimating that it took two months of work to complete Substance of Subsistence, Larin explains how what might seem simple (moving the camera to follow the player) is actually incredibly difficult, with every little change and iteration of the MGS2 code base. potentially sabotaging other game features later on.
“The real challenge,” says Larin, “was getting all the code to get my third-person camera working properly. Making changes to the game code is a very difficult task. You touch one thing and it breaks a million more. The game was simply written to work with certain camera angles and did not take into account the ability to rotate the camera. This fact caused me a lot of work, many functions of the game had to be fixed. It’s funny how many times I rewrote all my code.”
“But I really like the way the Metal Gear Solid engine works on the inside,” continues Larin. “Its internal design is very similar to the design of the operating system. I think it was developed by good programmers. Despite all the difficulties, I enjoyed working on it.
Larin plans to release SOS Project on November 5, the 20th anniversary of the Metal Gear Solid 2 extended game Substance. It will be available for free and players will need a legal copy of Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance for PC in order to use it. “Personally, I’ve always wanted to experience this game,” concludes Larin, “and I know many others do too. In my opinion, Metal Gear Solid 2 is a timeless classic and I am happy to give fans a long-awaited gift on the game’s 20th anniversary.”
If you are a big fan of Metal Gear, you may want to check out other stealth games. We also have guides to the best adventure games as well as the best classic games that are worth playing even today.
Source : PC Gamesn
