It took a modder just hours to add 4K support to the Metal Gear Solid collection

(Image credit: Konami)

In what may be a land speed record for highlighting the inadequacy of a PC port, modder Serge has published a small tool for the new Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection ports that enables them to run at 4K or other resolutions. Despite Konami's confusing claims over the last few months, players learned today that the emulated HD remasters of Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3 both render at 720p on PC, which makes for a particularly blurry picture on higher resolution 1440p or 4K monitors. This mod, which was released approximately 10 hours after the games unlocked on Steam, fixes that. It is 64.5 kilobytes.

I tested the MGSResolutionPatch in the opening minutes of Metal Gear Solid 3, setting the game to render at 3840x2160 (4K). The difference in image quality is stark.

It's possible that this resolution change breaks some of the game's visual effects, which were designed very specifically around the PlayStation 2's hardware. From the opening minutes, however, it looks flawless.

And as eagle-eyed players of the game have pointed out (on Resetera, for example), some of those effects were already changed in the porting process to the PlayStation 3 in the 2011 HD Collection, which this release is based on. Sticking to this resolution for 3D games in 2023 remains a baffling choice, especially because there are some parts of the games Konami has gone in to modify, to correct a few glitches that exist in the HD Collection. Surfacing a resolution option for players would've gone an incredibly long way in soothing anger at this remaster.

The MGSResolutionPath apparently causes some UI issues in Metal Gear Solid 2 (or rather, changing the resolution in general causes those issues)—but I have a suspicion modders will be quick to solve that problem in the coming days, before scrutinizing the two games for any other visual oddities caused by rendering at 4K.

To change the resolution in MGS2/3, just follow the simple instructions on the Github page linked above; you'll need to download a D3D11 file and the resolution patch, then stick both in the game's install folder. You can then open the MGSResolutionPatch.ini to configure the resolution (it defaults to 4K).

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.

When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).