Metal Gear Solid Lore

The Basics

The Metal Gear Solid video game series, created by Hideo Kojima, are games that
follow special forces operatives on different missions.There are seven games that are
considered canonical, and others that take place within the same world rules, but most players
don’t consider them canonical. These seven games include the following:


  1. Metal Gear Solid
  2. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
  3. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
  4. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
  5. Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
  6. Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes
  7. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
While they are listed in release order here, the actual chronological order of the games comes in a different order, that being:
  1. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
  2. Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
  3. Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes
  4. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
  5. Metal Gear Solid
  6. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
  7. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

The game series has a very complicated plot, and to someone just looking into the series,
it can be hard to understand. Through this website, the plot and themes of the game should
be able to be properly explained to anybody who is interested in the game series.

The games follow different points of time where the character that the player plays as is
tasked with taking down a Metal Gear, which is a mobile, bipedal, nuke launching machine.
The playable character in each game changes, as the games show different events in time in
that world from 1964 to 2014. All of the characters are considered Snake, however, which
can lead to some confusion. Luckily, they have different classifications for those characters
to help differentiate them. In chronological order, Snake Eater, Peace Walker, and Ground
Zeroes have you play as Naked Snake, later known as Big Boss. The Phantom Pain has you play
as Venom Snake, who is also referred to as Big Boss within the game. In Metal Gear Solid and
Guns of the Patriots, you play as Solid Snake, who is referred to as Old Snake by fans when
talking about Guns of the Patriots, and in Sons of Liberty, you play as Raiden, who has earned
the title Snake, but most people refer to them as Raiden. The three games that will be discussed
here are Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, Metal Gear Solid V: Phantom Pain, and Metal Gear Solid.