In a massive moment for the Metal Gear Solid 2 speedrunning community, a way to skip the game's first boss fight entirely has been uncovered.
Metal Gear Solid 2 is split into two parts: the Tanker and the Plant chapters, with Tanker serving as a short prologue featuring Snake. Famously, this is the only time you get to play as Solid Snake throughout the game, with Raiden being in charge for a majority of the game's runtime. Through this, Snake only gets one proper boss fight against Olga Gurlukovich, who, upon defeating, has Snake steal her USP pistol. And while you shouldn't be using it generally because non-lethal is the way to go, you need it for destroying the sensors for the bombs located on the ship.
Except that's no longer the case, as Metal Gear Solid 2 runner apel has released a video showing the discovery on YouTube (via Time Extension). In the video, apel drags an unconscious guard across to the lasers, which will then activate upon the guard waking up. Once the bombs go off, the game "triggers a flag that decides if the explosives can be triggered again or not. After the game over, if you press Continue, the game resets the value of that flag to the value it previously stored, so the explosives work again."
However, by rolling towards a checkpoint as the guard triggers the bombs, the "game saves the value of the flag after the explosions happen," which means Snake can casually stroll through, avoiding the encounter with Olga completely.
The bombs are the only section in the Tanker where you also need a lethal weapon, so you're free to move on and reach Raiden. This marks a huge shift for Metal Gear Solid 2 speedruns, as it's the first skip found that allows you to avoid a boss fight entirely. So expect some new world records in the near future.
