The Metal Gear Twitter account usually stays fairly consistent, promoting merchandise from the franchise’s many games, fan playthroughs and artwork, official streams and competitions; You know, the usual. Yesterday saw them stray away from that, replying to a Tweet from an account for a fictional employee of the Big Shell. Many believe this to be one of many teases for an upcoming announcement, thought to be a remaster of Metal Gear Solid 2, judging by the screenshots.
The fictional Tom Olsen is a maintenance engineer at the Big Shell, the offshore clean-up facility that was seized by a group of terrorists known as the Sons of Liberty in MGS2. They held the US President to ransom and threatened to destroy the facility if the ransom wasn’t paid. Olsen’s Twitter account started a daily account of his working life at the facility as recently as April 8, sprinkled with plenty of screenshots of the facility out of Metal Gear Solid 2. He even makes references to the infamous photos of women found in the lockers of the facility—apparently they’re his wife, Karen.
A picture of my wife that I keep in my locker. It really helps me get through the day. Love you, Karen. pic.twitter.com/qx5guHZ45r
— Tom Olsen (@TheTomOlsen) April 9, 2021
The Tweet from the Metal Gear account replied to his query as to why the facility was empty. According to the reply, visitors will be arriving at the facility next week and it’s this that fans believe is when we’ll hear an announcement regarding the game. Olsen’s account later referred to a “big event later this month” in the Shell 1 Core auditorium, but claimed he didn’t know any of the details.
Tom, we talked about this.
Please check your Codec each morning for meeting updates and evacuations in-case of PMC incursions.And we have visitors coming next week, so finish cleaning the vents and make sure the flags are all hung properly, but do not touch the C4 this time. https://t.co/u9C6yrONil
— METAL GEAR OFFICIAL (@Metalgear) April 14, 2021
Anyone recognize Emma Emmerich’s parrot up there in the screenshot above? “Hal! Hal!”
Another cryptic Tweet featured Olsen logging into the security office and he made a reference to his birthday at the end of the month. Others believe that if we don’t hear an announcement next week, we’ll likely hear one on April 30.
Every morning, we have to log in at the security office and enter our personal info. It’s kind of a hassle. Good news though, it’ll be my birthday soon! pic.twitter.com/wJswL46O2T
— Tom Olsen (@TheTomOlsen) April 9, 2021
This year would be the ideal year to release a remaster of Metal Gear Solid 2 seeing as the game celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2021. Rumors of a HD remaster have been circulating for months, as well as remasters of Metal Gear Solid 3 and 4. There’s also rumored to be a complete PlayStation 5 remake of Metal Gear Solid. Of course, this could all just be a bit of harmless fun too. As always, we’ll let you know as soon as we hear anything more official.