I've watched "What you need to knows" and all kinds of other story stuff trying to prepare myself for MGS5: Phantom Pain. Including Metal Gear Scanlon.

I'm still lost! Or maybe I'm not, I can't tell? It just feels so convoluted. Am I ok to play Phantom Pain? I just want the whole experience, and to not be out of the loop. The Metal Gear story is kind of a mess it feels like... :/

Just play it, you're putting way too much thought into this.

I'm only 25% into the game and I have played all the other games across many years; keep all this in mind when I say: the weird story stuff of MGS is pretty light in this game. You don't need to know all the little details of Philosophers and Cipher and XOF. This is just my opinion and like I said I'm only 25%. The gameplay is so fantastic you should really play the game.

as long as you understand what happened in MGS3, peace walker, and ground zeroes, you should be ok playing MGSV.

9 YEARS AGO, 9 YEARS ago.... 9 years ago. You are now ready.

Dude, I've played all of the games aside from MGS1 and I barely understand what happens in the series. It doesn't matter.

Im '30+ hours in (a lot of Side Ops tho), have played MGS 1, 2, 3, 4 and GZ and I don't know what exactly is going on in MGS5.... sooo.

Yes. That is the whole point of Metal Gear Scanlon, was to show that Metal Gear's story was/is a mess. The lesson is -the story doesn't matter. The story connections are/were not worth following or trying to parse. Just enjoy the Phantom Pain, notice Hideo strip a lot of story out of it, and be happy.

Hey, MGSV5 has such little story in it, it really doesn't matter.

They took a time period referenced heavily in previous games and decided not to include any of that stuff, but to introduce a bunch of new things instead. So you're pretty much fine.

@mast: I'll be happy to answer any questions you have on Metal Gear.

You should just play the games. If you own a PS3 you can play them all. Metal Gear Scanlon is fun, but at many points I think it isn't ideal for newcomers since Dan is not great at explaining the stories of any game other than 1. I actually think his explanations of MGS2 make it sound more confusing than it needs to be.

Metal Gear Scanlon is lots of fun. I just don't think it's an ideal introduction to the series.

@MonkeyKing1969: I disagree. Metal Gear Scanlon was supposed to be an introduction to Metal Gear for Drew with an "expert" as his copilot. At the end of the show Dan says Metal Gears story is his favorite piece of fiction ever.

Also, Metal Gear has a lot of stupid bullshit on the outright plot level, but every game has a pretty intellectual philosophical and thematic message.

Big Boss is sad and his friends are also sad. There's your primer.

You tried jumping into MGSV without playing them and merely going off of Scanlon and other read ups?

Eeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwww

That's what I did. I mean, I kinda absorbed a lot of the story through osmosis through the years, but never really had any desire to play the games. Except the Metal Gear Ac!d series. Because they're the best.

Well like, if you have the desire to jump into the final one in the entire series for some reason, I'd think you'd want to play the main series yourself at least. I don't really see why you'd suddenly have the desire to play this one but never the others.

Also I never thought I'd see a human being say that about MGA

@frostyryan: Uh, I think this one being a completely different type of game then every other title in the series might have something to do with it.

@deegee: I think you use the word "completely" too loosely. It's dramatically different yes but not completely. And besides, we were talking about the story. He bothered to try to get caught up on the story through artificial means but didn't want to even play the others himself to do so.

People play games for different reasons though so it's fair, I'm just making conversation

Why would you think that? I never played the other games, I just watched Metal Gear Scanlon and a couple of YouTube synopses. I don't feel like I have missed anything, and Phantom Pain is one of the best games I have ever played.

why don't you just play it and google things that you don't understand?

Super weak story here, and not much of it either. Just play the game it will all kind of make sense. First chapter is pretty self contained with barely any connections to the other games. 2nd chapter only has a couple of missions, and even after the ending all you've got are tapes that "connect" to the other games in the series. You should be fine.

I've played all the MGS games and even I don't think that this person should do the same in order to make sense of this game. First of all, two of the games take place after this one, so they are irrelevant. Second, the story makes more sense chronologically summarized than it does presented in the games.

Basically, there are some 'bad guys' who are trying to do shit on behalf of the Soviet Union, and there are some 'good guys' who are trying to do shit on behalf of the world and soldiers themselves. All of them are a little misguided, and it all comes down to Big Boss' mission to kill The Boss in MGS3, the personal and geopolitical implications of that, and her disciples trying to honor her memory in different ways.

Lastly, you haven't even played the game yet? If you have a vague idea of the core of what happened in MGS3 and Peace Walker, you can and should play MGSV. Play Ground Zeroes, too, because that game is less than two hours long, is extremely cheap, will get you bonuses for MGSV, and is the direct prequel to MGSV.

The gameplay is the best part. So just play it, you'll be fine.

@Mike: You missed actually playing the games.

It's an interactive medium, so if you just watched someone else play them, you didn't actually experience the content.

I don't think so. After watching Metal Gear Scanlon, I'm positive the previous Metal Gear Solid games were not for me. I'm happy with just seeing what they were like and knowing the general idea of the story. I didn't miss anything.

Thanks for all the replies. I actually have played the other Metal Gear games (except for the ones on PSP), it's just been forever ago and I've forgotten a lot.

I think Metal Gear Scanlon, and the primers/wikipedia articles I read might be good enough, so I just went ahead and bought the game and jumped right in. So far I haven't come across anything super confusing. If I do, I'll just look up stuff about it, but so far I remember the broad strokes well enough. I mainly just didn't want to be doing myself a disservice by not being super up to date on the previous games.

I've never been into the Metal Gear story/lore but I've played them all and enjoyed them, especially for the gameplay in 5.