Metal Gear Solid 2: a speedrunner finally skips the fight with Olga after 25 years

Numerama tells the story of a speedrunner named apel, a pillar of the Tomb Raider community who is also active in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. In a video published on YouTube on September 26, he presents an exploit called the "Olga Skip" that avoids the game's very first confrontation, a first in 25 years of the game's history.

The context: in the introduction on the Tanker, you have to face Olga Gurlukovich, then pick up her USP pistol. That weapon can remotely destroy the sensors linked to the explosives in a booby-trapped corridor, which Snake's tranquilizer pistol cannot do. Without it, there is no way through.

Apel's trick is to set off the explosives without the game re-arming them afterwards. He places a sleeping guard at the entrance of the corridor; when the guard wakes up, he triggers the bombs. At the same moment, apel rolls Snake to a passage point, so the game records the explosion. After pressing "Continue", the game considers the bombs to have gone off. Snake can then pass, as long as he enters the machine room through the same door.

Released in 2001 on PlayStation 2, the game has been dissected for a quarter century, and runs take around an hour and fifteen minutes depending on the category. Without the Olga fight, they should be improved in the coming weeks. I find it touching that such a well-studied game can still hide such a secret.

Source: Numerama