A new speedrunning exploit has been discovered in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, one that allows players to skip the game’s first boss fight with Olga Gurlukovich during the Tanker mission. This discovery marks the first-ever recorded boss skip in Metal Gear Solid 2, and makes for a fairly significant shake-up for the speedrunning scene.
Metal Gear Solid 2, unlike subsequent games, relies on quasi-metroidvania elements for progression through its two campaign “maps.” The player is introduced to this concept in the opening Tanker mission, which is famously the only part of Metal Gear Solid 2 that sees you playing as Solid Snake himself. As is his MO, Solid begins this mission with minimal gear, not even bothering to bring any weapons beyond an M9 tranquilizer pistol. Unfortunately, he needs a real gun to disable explosives barring his path to Metal Gear Ray, and the only way to obtain an appropriate gun is to defeat Olga, another infiltrator. This showdown serves as Olga’s introduction as well as an extended combat tutorial, and is quite time-consuming. But, as proven by speedrunner apel on YouTube, it apparently can be avoided altogether.
To achieve the Olga skip, you have to drag an unconscious guard to an explosives-laden hallway blocking the way to the hold, where Colonel Dolph is making a speech and presenting Metal Gear Ray. Normally, the only way to disable these explosives would be to shoot the consoles powering the motion-sensing lasers, which can only work with Olga’s pistol. But if you place the knocked-out guard beneath the lasers, he’ll activate the explosives when he wakes up. This will generally result in a game over, but by timing Snake’s positioning just right, you can essentially make the game “flag” that the explosives have already been detonated, thus allowing you to progress after reloading the game.
The benefits that this discovery will have for the Metal Gear Solid speedrunning community are obvious. Even for experienced players, Olga often serves as a major slowdown point in the Tanker chapter, as Snake’s M9 isn’t exactly the most effective weapon, and Olga’s use of cover means that unloading a clip for a quick victory isn’t really feasible. With this newly discovered exploit, you can get past the explosives-rigged hallway and be well on your way to Metal Gear Ray mere minutes after starting the game.
It doesn’t appear that this Olga boss skip actually impacts the Metal Gear Solid 2 story at all. The rest of the game unfolds as though Snake and Olga had already met regardless.
Players Are Still Discovering New Secrets in Metal Gear Solid 2
Aside from being a win for speedrunners, this new MGS2 discovery helps underscore what makes Metal Gear such a great franchise. Metal Gear Solid 2, in particular, has aged incredibly well, and even first-time players today will remark upon how “good,” simply put, it feels to play. A lot of this can be attributed to its numerous interweaving systems, which still lead to surprises more than two decades later. For instance, shortly before this Olga skip was discovered, MGS2 players learned that Raiden can reduce his visibility throughout the Plant mission by wearing the BDU disguise.
In a contemporary stealth game (let’s say, Assassin’s Creed or Ghost of Yotei), I never expect to be surprised by mechanics or systems. I may be surprised by certain plot beats or even missions/setpieces, but at the end of the day, I know that the gameplay is going to boil down to pressing the “kill” button at the proper moment, hiding behind walls, and maybe using a straightforward tool like a smoke bomb to get out of a jam. These games, despite having the benefit of hindsight and new tech, lack the collaborative complexity of a Metal Gear Solid 2.
I only recently replayed Metal Gear Solid 2, so the nuances of its gameplay are especially fresh in my mind. I didn’t leverage the aforementioned Olga-skip exploit in my last run, but I did make several personal discoveries about the game, even though I’ve beaten it multiple times.
Aside from being a win for speedrunners, this new MGS2 discovery helps underscore what makes Metal Gear such a great franchise.
One that stands out occurred during the Emma Emmerich escort mission. Emma is deathly afraid of bugs, and there’s a swarm of roaches blocking the path forward at one point. When I first played MGS2, I looked up the “proper” way to solve this problem: by spraying the coolant tool to disperse the bugs. But on my second playthrough, I realized that I could simply grapple Emma and drag her to the elevator. On my third and most recent playthrough, I discovered that you can actually knock Emma out entirely, and simply drag her to the elevator that way. Not the most ethical methods, but they get the job done.
I first played Metal Gear Solid 2 when I was a young teenager, but already I had been conditioned by contemporary gaming to expect one, proper way of accomplishing a goal. Freedom for me, at that time, boiled down to whether I wanted to attack a fortress from the left or the right in games like Far Cry 3. What I realized later, as my tastes changed and evolved, is that the Metal Gear games are deeply reactive as a rule, anticipating the player’s moves and teeing up unique reactions for them. This complex web of different systems is what allows for things like the Olga skip, and I’m left wishing we still got AAA games as sophisticated as this 2001 title.
- Released
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November 13, 2001
- ESRB
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M For Mature 17+ Due To Animated Blood, Animated Violence
- Engine
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Fox Engine
