New Metal Gear Solid 2 mod adds MGS3-style camera
To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance, a new mod has been released that adds a third-person camera, similar to Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence. While the first two Metal Gear Solid games, and the original release of the third one, featured an overhead camera, the Subsistence release for 3 added in a third-person camera with full rotation, to account for that game's more open environments. Now, modder oct0xor has gone through the arduous task of adding a third-person camera to Substance, titling it The Substance of Subsistence.
According to oct0xor, adding in this camera required reverse-engineering large parts of the game and writing thousands of lines of new code. In order to promote compatibility among mods, he also created the Solid Mods Loader. While it won't work with older mods, hopefully future modders will keep it in mind.
The Substance of Subsistence also adds new controls for the sword segments, mapping the various different attacks to face buttons rather than the right analog stick. For those that might want to try the new controls but don't like the new camera angle, the third-person camera can be disabled at any time in-game. A separate mod, to hide HUD elements, is also included, and can be added through the Solid Mods Loader.
The timing of the mod is somewhat unfortunate as Metal Gear Solid 2 is not currently on sale for PC. While it was officially ported to PC upon release, it was only available on disc until September of 2020 when it was released on GOG. However, in November of 2021, it was delisted as Konami lost the rights to some real-world war footage in the cutscenes. Konami pledged that they are working on bringing them back, but it's unclear when or if that will happen.
The Substance of Subsistence on GitHub The Substance of Subsistence dev diary video
