Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance Third-Person Camera Mod To Arrive Soon

Metal Gear Solid 2 is often considered to be way ahead of its time, and among the greatest video games of all time. One of Hideo Kojima’s finest works to date, it is still popular among gamers and played to this day, however, the fixed camera angle is still a thorn in the sides of many.

This will soon be changing now, thanks to a fan project titled Substance of Subsistence, which is bringing the 3D camera from Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence to MGS2: Substance.

Major Takeaways:

• Third-person camera mod for Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance.
• Releasing on November 5, 2022.
• Modder will make resources available for others to use.

The modder, Boris Larin, who goes by the name of oct0xor on YouTube has revealed the release date for his third-person camera mod for Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance. It will be released on November 5, 2022.

Metal Gear Solid 2 – The Substance Of Subsistence (S.O.S.) (Unofficial Project) Release Date Trailer https://t.co/dsVYI2cszG

— Boris Larin (@oct0xor) September 15, 2022

Boris is a ‘former console hacker’ who has worked on the PS3 and PS4, so without a doubt, he has coding background. Prior to the announcement of this project, he tweeted that:

This year I’ve spent most of my day offs working on a huge code-based modification of a cult classic video game. To achieve my goals I’ve had to reverse engineer and re-write from scratch many parts of game’s engine. Full announcement is coming soon!”

Going through his dev diary on his YouTube channel, and his various tweets, we learn that this project indeed was a huge undertaking. Since the code for the third-person camera never existed in the game, he had to reverse engineer the whole game and rewrite many things in the game’s engine.

Boris says that thousands of lines of new code were added to the game, and he added new controls to the game as well. Moreover, if you still prefer the traditional fixed camera angle, you’ll be pleased to know Boris made it so that it can be enabled or disabled at any time. Thus, you can switch between them easily on the fly.

The project will be 100% open source and will come with its own mod loader – other developers may take advantage of it for their own mods

— Boris Larin (@oct0xor) September 15, 2022

Boris further says that the project is 100% open source and will come with its own mod loader, and he will be releasing his GCL scripts decompiler and other resources.

I will also release an .idc file for my IDA Pro database, so others can use/continue my reverse engineering work to make other mods or complete full decompilcation of the game

— Boris Larin (@oct0xor) September 15, 2022

With this, other modders will be able to make their own mods for the game or continue the decompilation of the game since Boris has achieved his goal and has no intention of fully decompiling the game.

This truly was a tremendous task, but the completion is sure to please fans. More so because it was their plan for Boris to release the mod on November 5, 2022, which marks the 20th anniversary of Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance.

Metal Gear Solid 3 too originally did not have a third-person freely rotatable camera. This is because Hideo Kojima, the seminal creator of the hit series, considered MGS1-3 a trilogy, and wanted all to have a fixed camera angle to preserve the feel of the trilogy, despite the fact that the gaming industry was rapidly moving towards freely rotatable 3D cameras in games.

In the tradition of Metal Gear Solid games receiving expanded additions post-release, MGS3: Snake Eater received an expanded version titled MGS3: Subsistence, which included the freely rotatable 3D camera, a first for the series. It is this camera that was modded by Boris into the expanded edition of MGS2 titled MGS2: Substance.

This is sure to breathe new life into the game so many years after release. Ever since the release of MGSV: The Phantom Pain, fans had given up hope on the MGS series as Hideo Kojima left Konami and Metal Gear Survive had negative reviews.

However, with the recent trend of remakes and remasters, and rumors flying around of an MGS1 Remake, many fans are excited. Another thing much desired by the fans is the release of the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection on PC, but this may be too far away.

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