Question answered and the dilemma solved. I'm not closing the thread yet because of the gibs.

Original post:

So I've played MGS on PS1 back in the day (almost 20 years ago? holy shit?) and of course I loved it, but I never got to play the rest of the franchise with exception of non-canon MGS: Ghost Babel on GBC. All the hype surrounding the Death Stranding finally made me focus on this part of my behemoth backlog and I replayed the original MGS (again, loved it - that game doesn't ever get old huh?) and now I'm halfway through Sons of Liberty and I need help from fellow Metal Gearheads.

At first I wanted to play the game by order of release, the way the stories were told originally, the logical and correct way :) Yet now I'm considering another approach and that would be playing MGS4 right after MGS2, finishing Solid Snake's story and then going Snake Eater - (skipping Portable Ops) - Peace Walker - Ground Zeroes - Phantom Pain. That order would minimalize time jumping and basically made me play modern part of MGS first, chronologically and then prequel part MGS second, again, chronologically. I would like to ask you, fans who already played all the games, if this order might reduce my overall experience or if it, in this case, doesn't matter. Basically I want to avoid getting spoiled something from MGS3 by playing MGS4 beforehand.

TL;DR - Is there any harm in playing MGS4 before MGS3? As I would like to play first [MGS1 - MGS2 - MGS4] and then [MGS3 - MGS:PW - MGSV:GZ - MGSV:PP] in order to reduce jumping on the timeline of events.

Please avoid any spoilers in your replies.

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7 years ago*

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MGS4 is where much of the story is told (with really long cutscenes), so bits of BB's story may be spoiled.

If I had to recommend an order to play them would be the chronological one (which is the one I played the last time):
MGS3 - MGS:PO(optional) - MGS:PW - MGSV:GZ - MGSV:PP - MG - MG2 - MGS1 - MGS2 - MGS4

7 years ago
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Well chronological playtrough might be fun for second playtrough of the entire series yet first-timer might get robbed of all the foreshadowing fun no? Also some huge impacts of appearing and returning characters. If you start playing as BB it's kind of no big deal but if you hear about him and think about him for to games (not to mention going against him in the original series), the impact of MGS3 events must be huge right?

7 years ago
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can't help on the topic but have a bump:)

7 years ago
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I'd say play 3 before 4. Some of the characters from 3 gets their story end in 4, if you wouldn't play 3 first, you might be confused who are these characters (from 3) since you wouldn't be familiar with them. Playinh 3 first might feel odd due to the different characters and settings, but you'd be less confused while playing 4.

7 years ago
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This is exactly what I thought and I needed exactly this confirmation. I'm going to continue by the order of release. Thanks!

7 years ago
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Normally I'd warn against that (despite not playing 4 yet) as some series update the mechanics/gameplay and such, it can be hard to go back, if you're playing the original metal gear solid 3 (on ps2), I'd say start with that one first as it doesn't have the 3d camera I believe so it plays closer to 1-2, if you're playing it on any other system, you should (afaik it was always the version ported, except maybe the 3ds version without 2 sticks) be playing the version with the 3d camera so you should be fine to return to it after 4.

As Cradow said, storyline wise, probably better to do 3 first as well.

7 years ago
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Thanks and bump!

7 years ago
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Closed 7 years ago by Winny.