still can't believe i asked this 5yrs ago! time flies!
damn this brings back memories, i figured out a solution which was just offsetting the camera from the player's position and scaling a set distance based on how far their cursor is on the screen + got it to also do the game with a controller except the first part wasn't needed.
and this is the code i made to get it to work based on whatever distance it could be given.
ended up looking like this. this is from a project template I made for my patrons at (patreon.com/SalmanShh)