#5.7x28

[thafreedomwall]

Belgian soldier with an FN Five-seveN during a joint exercise in Romania

[anotheraznative]

HK MP7 or FN P90? 🤔

[theocrabalar]

Guns we never got to use in Metal Gear Solid 2

So, instead of gushing over how amazing MGS2 is, let's get down to brass tacks and immediately nerd out over what we didn't get. First off, let's start at the beginning. Olga Gurlukovich, the woman who's the sole reason I start making monkey noises when I see a woman in super baggy pants with suspenders hanging down. She carries a PSS pistol;

The PSS is a silent semi-automatic pistol, this pistol gets tossed overboard before the player can get a chance to use it. If in use by the Gurlukovich mercenaries, we could imagine it would be a pistol with very scarce ammo, but also highly effective, being semi-auto. Probably considered a lethal option to the XM9.

Next up, we have the NRS2. No good in-game picture available, so a picture of the real thing will do;

This highly unusual knife gun, which is fired with the blade pointed towards yourself. For gameplay, this could probably be used for focus on close quarters fighting, but with a possibility of shooting at something in the distance without needing to swap weapons. It would certainly be an interesting option that could make gameplay varied.

Next up, the Colt Single Action Army revolver.

"This is the greatest handgun ever made. The Colt Single Action Army. Six bullets. More than enough to kill anything that moves." It's clear that MGS3 figured out, holy shit, this gun is cool and we need to let the player use it. Especially, with how they added gameplay features to it, they decided to give the gun the ability to ricochet bullets so you can trickshot your way through Tselinogorsk. The same mindset in MGS2 could have made for some really interesting choices considering all the fancy indoor areas and hallways. There's also no proper magnum handgun for the player in MGS2, so if you want a handgun that can blast away common enemies in a single shot to the chest, this could have been it.

Sergei Gurlukovich himself pulls a Makarov on Scott Dolph during the tanker chapter. This would been a basic sidearm for the mercenaries and is understandably cut, it's a gun that it's difficult to make exciting for the player as it would performed the same as the USP, but lower capacity and no laser and no silencer. Then again, it could have been added purely for variety's sake. Which is always good to make something feel vast and a real universe.

"Laugh and grow fat" This one would be interesting in-game for the player. Provided it would be somewhat controllable for skilled players, and sharing ammo with the USP, it could be a hog for churning through your ammo and low range, but if used up closed, you could definitely do some solid bursts of damage. What magazine the gun would have, would definitely help decide if you could bursts a few enemies before reloading, or needing to reloading between every enemy.

This is another special one. It's already very special that a russian mercenary group would use a western shotgun such as the SPAS-12. It also features a combination pump and semi-automatic mechanism. This could in theory allow the player to change the firerate. Who knows for what purpose, there could be some video game logic like how they can only use the really powerful ammunition with a pump-action, and have the less damaging ammo be spammable with the semi-automatic mechanism. Or, they could skip that and make the shotgun be only pump or only semi, and then focus on how it works in that way. It definitely opens up a world of weird gameplay options.

Here's a weird one, a rail gun. MGS2 is a stealth game. I realize that, and I really like it. But it really suffers in the department of being able to do things at a distance outside of set pieces set up for sniping. It would definitely be a New Game Plus type of gun, maybe given out for playing through the game while helping or tranq'ing birds, not killing them. It would definitely be a great gun for taking out bosses. It was later implemented in Peace Walker, but required quite the team effort to use it efficiently. Clearly, the developers also loved this magnificent piece of art and weaponry in game.

Here's another fun one. Assuming it would be a counter to the M4 later available in-game, the AN94, could possibly given the hyper-burst option, making it fire two rounds per trigger press in an insane fire rate. Looking at how the gun has a light or laser mounted onto it's front gas port/gas block, it looks really close to be able to be used by the player already.

Here's a gun that is really known for being cut content. The French FAMAS. How it made it's way to the tanker or plant would be difficult to imagine considering it was supposed to be only for the genome soldiers in Alaska in MGS1. It would occupy the same purpose as the AKS74u and the M4 as well, so it wouldn't add anything new to the player, but it would feel familiar for returning MGS1 players. While not correct, the gun could have had a three round burst to differentiate it, like how it does in Counter-Strike 1.6 which is what I really know it from, form these days.

The FN P90. What a wonderful PDW. Again, another gun that's understandable that we don't have access to, as it wouldn't contribute much, but would also clutter an already weird to navigate inventory. It's equipped with the original old red dot sight, so in first person view, that would actually be very different for regular players of first person shooters with iron sights from these days.

Here's a really weird one, the SPP-1M Underwater pistol. Wait what? So in the original design of MGS2, there was an even greater focus on the underwater parts of the gameplay, even more fighting. Which explains why someone would suggest adding an pistol focused on underwater fighting. Probably also related to the cut Dead Cell member who went by the name "Chinaman" who was an olympic level swimmer, and if Vamp's boss fight wasn't annoying enough, I can totally see the need for a gun in that section. There is leftover code in the game that suggest this got quite far in development for player use, the gun itself as far as I know, don't have a model in-game.

And here for the last firearm that should/could have been available to the player. The M203 grenade launcher. It's very clearly shown off in several cutscenes, being used by both the Navy Seals when confronting Fortune, as well as Snake Plissken;

How this would be utilized in-game would be interesting. Could definitely be a very viable boss-encounter weapon with it's full-auto capability from the M4, and then being able to somehow quickly switch over to using the grenade launcher. So in conclusion, many of this firearms were considered, but when we think about it, we can also clearly understand why much of it was cut, so there would be less work to do on bland equipment, so the developers could rather focus and shine up all the equipment that is actually interesting gameplay wise.

Most images blatantly stolen/copied from IMFDB.org, MetalGear.fandom.com and Wikipedia.

[murderface77]

Kel-Tec P50.

[call-me-remi]

FN Five seveN?

Or Ruger 57?

[theleadslinger]

[schweizerqualitaet]

Yeah, @epitoma-rei-militaris, but a cool one

[historicalfirearms]

FN P90 Prototypes

In the mid 1980s Fabrique Nationale began working on a new personal defence weapon. While P90s full development history of is still relatively unknown, it is known that Jean-Paul Denis and Marc Neuforge developed the 5.7x28mm SS90 round to replace the 9x19mm commonly used in submachine guns. FN developed the SS90 to create a low-recoil, high stopping power projectile. In 1989, NATO issued a specification for two personal defence weapons, one a pistol and the other shoulder fired compact weapon. The pistol was to weigh less than 1kg while the shoulder fired weapon would weigh less than 3kg. Both weapons were to fire a cartridge with improved range, accuracy and terminal ballistic performance in comparison to 9x19mm. 

NATO planned to equip rear-echelon troops with these new personal defence weapons, personnel who couldn’t carry or didn’t need a standard issue rifle. NATO believed that in the event of war Soviet special forces would attempt to disrupt Western lines of communication and logistical efforts, so a weapon firing a round that could penetrate Soviet body armour at close ranges was desirable.

Demonstration of aiming a P90 Prototype (source)

FN’s answer to this specification had been in development since 1986, and had evolved from several unusual prototypes. However, the unifying aspect of the designs were the SS90 cartridge and the high capacity horizontal magazine. The photographs above show two of the early incarnations of FN’s design. The Hill submachine gun’s design appears to have influenced the P90's design, incorporating a feed-system that turned the bullet in the weapon rather than in the feedway of the magazine (see image #2).  

The first prototype appears to be a shoulder fired design (see image #1) while the second is a handheld, point shoot weapon (see image #2). It is unclear from the photograph where the user inserted the first prototype’s magazine but the second photograph shows that the magazine was placed on top of the barrel. In 1989, Rene Predazzer patented a top-mounted horizontal magazine which incorporated a spiral feedway which rotated the cartridge before it entered the weapon’s action. This loading system came to define the P90′s design.

Rene Predazzer’s top mounted longitudinal magazine (source)

In 1988, FN announced the development of the P90, and in 1990, launched the new weapon. In 1992, FN refined the P90′s 5.7×28mm ammunition shortening the projectile slightly. The new SS190 round was 2.7mm shorter but had slightly more mass with an aluminium core. In 1993, FN redesigned the P90 and its magazine to chamber the new SS190 round.  It would be a decade before NATO finally evaluated the P90 and its 5.7mm round. In 2002, NATO trials began pitting the FN 5.7x28mm round against the rival 4.6x30mm round developed by Heckler & Koch. The trials found the 5.7mm round to be superior but Germany rejected the trials’ recommendation and NATO standardised to neither round.  

In January 1995, Predazzer patented an unconventional pistol design which incorporated his top loaded longitudinal magazine. This appears to be an evolution of the second handheld prototype (see image #2) and in theory fulfilled the pistol element of NATO’s Personal Defence Weapon specification. Several years later, in 1998, the design of FN’s 5.7x28mm pistol, the Five-Seven, was finalised and launched. 

Rene Predazzer’s unconventional pistol design incorporating his longitudinal magazine, patented in 1996 (source)

The final design (see image #3) uses a blowback action and fires from a closed bolt which improves the weapon’s accuracy. Feeding from a 50-round magazine, the P90 is fully ambidextrous with two sets of back-up sites mounted either side of its collimating optical sight, charging handles and magazine release catches either side and an ambidextrous safety located just below the trigger. The design makes use of new polymers, the translucent magazine itself is made from polycarbonate. Despite its unusual shape the P90 is an ergonomic weapon which is easy to quickly master. The P90 is an extremely flat shooting automatic weapon despite its high, 900 rounds per minute, cyclic rate. It has been adopted by over a dozen nations, primarily for special operations and counter terrorism units while Belgium is the only country to have adopted it for its original purpose to arm rear echelon troops.

Sources:

Images: 1 2 3 4

‘In The Line of Fire’, Global Defence Review, D. Oliver, (2006),[source]

‘Top mounted longitudinal magazine’, US Patent #4905394, R. Predazzer, 06/03/1990 (source) 

‘High-performance projectile’, US Patent #5012743, J. Denis & M. Neuforge, 07/05/1991 (source)

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