Someone has made a VR mod for Metal Gear Solid 2, which is so fitting for the plot of the game that I’m shocked no one has done it before.
YouTube creator Shiffo released a video this week showcasing their mod for Metal Gear Solid 2’s Master Collection version. It allows you to play the game in Virtual Reality, either in third-person as the game typically is, or entirely through a first-person perspective. At the moment, the game’s opening – the tanker mission featuring Solid Snake – is the only part available to play with the mod, which is set to be released in beta “soon.”
In a YouTube video, the creator shows their run through the entire mission, demonstrating that the entire thing works in VR right now. The Raiden-led plant mission that makes up the majority of Metal Gear Solid 2 isn’t there just yet, but if anything, that’s just even more fitting.
Mild spoilers for Metal Gear Solid 2 ahead
Before infiltrating the Big Shell as part of the plant chapter in Metal Gear Solid 2, Raiden underwent hundreds of VR missions in preparation for his real mission, including the Shadow Moses Incident from Metal Gear Solid 1 and the tanker chapter of Metal Gear Solid 2. He explains this to Iroquois Pliskin, a man who looks very much like Solid Snake, but can’t be, because he died on that tanker two years ago.
The implication is that your experience playing through Metal Gear Solid and its VR missions is supposed to mirror Raiden’s experience. Some do speculate that the tanker mission found in MGS2 is actually Raiden’s experience. However, Snake calls out his VR mission, saying, “I doubt it accurately simulates the events of that actual mission.”
Snake is said to have blown up the tanker of his own accord, which is not what happened in the mission, and we see what actually happens in the opening of the game. Still, having your chance to play through the tanker mission in VR is as close to being Raiden as you can get. I don’t know that it was intentional from the mod developer, but they’ve made perhaps the most fitting VR mod of all time.