A modder named Boris "Oct0xor" Larin recently revealed that they have created a third-person camera control mod for Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the game (thanks Kotaku!).
Traditionally, players have only been able to view the character of Raiden in Metal Gear Solid 2 from an overheard or fixed position — at least in third person.
The same went for the original release of Metal Gear Solid 3. In Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence, however, players could successfully rotate the camera around themselves in order to aid with the new online mode, and this is what this latest mod tries and succeeds in replicating.
Now, thanks to Larin, it is possible for players who have access to a PC version of Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance to patch their game and have a much greater level of control over the camera. In order to get this to work, Larin had to reverse-engineer and rewrite the camera system entirely in the game engine, with the release date trailer estimating the new lines of code to be in the thousands. He also had to overcome issues with the camera clipping through the wall, and squash some newly-introduced movement bugs that came about from the changes to the engine.
It all sounds amazing, but it does come with a bit of a catch. The game currently isn't for sale on PC after being delisted from digital storefronts in November 2021, because of its use of historical archive footage.