Look, I don’t blame you – navigating your way around the slightly loopy and labyrinthine narrative chronology of the Metal Gear games is quite the task. Luckily for your sanity, we’ve put together this handy and streamlined guide, which lists and details all of the Metal Gear games in chronological order by the year they took place. Oh, and beware all ye who live in fear of spoilers, because they are very much in abundance from this point forward.
Unfolding during the tumult of the Cold War, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater centres on main protagonist Naked Snake. A skilled operative belonging to the clandestine FOX organisation, Naked Snake finds himself tasked with entering the fictional tropical jungle region of Tselinoyarsk in the Soviet Union to rescue a double agent nuclear scientist and lay waste to a prototype nuclear tank before it becomes operational. It isn’t long before the mission goes entirely south when The Boss, Naked Snake’s former mentor, defects to the Soviet Union and leaves him for dead. Ultimately acting as the origin story for Big Boss and defining the villain that we would later come to know, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater deftly set the stage for the epic, decades-spanning saga which would follow, while also introducing players to long-term antagonist Revolver Ocelot who would feature much more prominently in the series decades later.
Taking place some six years after the events chronicled in Snake Eater, Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops shows us a Naked Snake very much in transition. Disaffected by his previous life as a straight-laced soldier which led to tragedy and betrayal, Portable Ops sees Naked Snake shift into a commander role as he escapes capture by his old unit, FOX, which has gone rogue and is seeking to obtain a nuclear-equipped Metal Gear of its own. In response, Naked Snake assembles a private army of his own and lays waste to his old unit once and for all.
After the dismantling of his old FOX unit four years prior, Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker shows us a much more seasoned Naked Snake that is the head of Militaires Sans Frontières (MSF), a private military outfit with global outreach. Of course, it isn’t long before trouble stirs, and Naked Snake (who now adopts the moniker of Big Boss), along with MSF, is hired to investigate the appearance of an enigmatic armed group that has taken over Costa Rica. Before long, MSF and Big Boss discover that the takeover was a CIA-approved coup, and the American agency is creating its own nuclear-equipped stomping machine under the codename ‘Peace Walker’. After confronting Peace Walker, Big Boss tragically comes to realise that the AI driving the machine is based on none other than The Boss, his old mentor, forcing him to essentially kill his mentor once again.
Acting as a prequel which sets the stage for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Ground Zeroes takes place nine years before that title and shows Big Boss and MSF at the height of their powers. After Big Boss finds himself in Cuba to rescue Paz, a loyal South American allied agent, from a U.S.-run black site, he quickly learns of a mysterious organisation known as Cipher. Before Big Boss can react, however, MSF comes under attack from a new private army which goes by the name XOF and is headed up by an enigmatic mercenary known only as Skull Face. With MSF destroyed, Big Boss is also severely injured during the attack and falls into a long-term coma, leading directly into the events chronicled in The Phantom Pain.
After spending nine years in a coma, Big Boss finally wakes up from his comatose state. Conscious of his prior infamy and keen to use his death as a means to operate undetected, Big Boss changes himself into ‘Venom Snake’ and takes up the leadership of the Diamond Dogs, an all-new mercenary group. Hellbent on taking a violent revenge on Skull Face, Venom Snake takes his Diamond Dogs into the depths of Cold War Afghanistan and beyond, as he wages war on a mysterious enemy that may not be all he seems to be.
Casting players as Solid Snake, a rookie infiltration specialist belonging to the FOXHOUND agency, Metal Gear tasked wannabe stealth lovers with sneaking into the fortified state of Outer Haven to rescue a missing colleague while also gathering intelligence on a secret weapon currently in development. As you might have guessed, said secret weapon is in fact a Metal Gear unit, and if things weren’t bad enough, it transpires that Solid Snake’s commanding officer, Big Boss, is none other than the leader of Outer Heaven, because, of course, he was. Naturally, this all builds to a final scrap, which not only results in the destruction of Metal Gear but also of Outer Heaven more broadly, in which Big Boss is seen to perish under the rubble. When it rains, it pours, eh?
With the events of Metal Gear now four years in the past, Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake has our titular sneaky lad summoned out of retirement to make his way into the militaristic country of Zanizbar Land in order to rescue a kidnapped genius scientist. Wouldn’t you know that Big Boss was pretending to be dead and, well, comes after Solid Snake like he stole his lunch money with a new Metal Gear unit, Metal Gear D, in tow. Making sure Big Boss is properly dead this time and utterly wrecking Metal Gear D into the bargain, Solid Snake finally ends the thirty-five-year reign of Big Boss to the clapping and cheers of everybody who didn’t fancy getting nuked. Top stuff.
Retired after the events of Outer Heaven and Zanzibar Land, Solid Snake was probably chilling himself out quite nicely with a whiskey on the rocks and his favourite book when his commanding officer, Colonel Roy Campbell, called him back into action to sneak into a nuclear weapons disposal facility in Alaska. After doing his stealth thing and making his way into the Alaskan base on Shadow Moses Island, Solid Snake soon discovers that the whole facility has been taken over by FOXHOUND, a rogue special forces unit headed up by Liquid Snake, the genetic twin of our grizzled protagonist who it is also revealed, has also been created through genetic engineering. After thwarting a nuclear missile launch and engaging in a climactic final battle with Liquid Snake, Solid Snake learns that Liquid Snake is infected by a deadly virus known as ‘FOXDIE’, and it is this virus which finally ends the life of his genetic twin, yet Solid Snake, who also seemingly has the virus, continues to live.
Unfurling its story in two distinct parts across a two-year timespan, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty begins with Solid Snake infiltrating a tanker to get the skinny on an all-new Metal Gear unit, only for said Metal Gear unit to be half-inched by longtime villain Revolver Ocelot. Two years after these events, players take control of Raiden, an elite special forces warrior who has been dispatched to the ‘Big Shell’ offshore facility to rescue the President of the United States. With the Big Shell taken over by a new terrorist group who not only call themselves the ‘Sons of Liberty’, but are seemingly led by Solid Snake no less, Raiden stumbles into a global conspiracy headed by a shadowy group called ‘The Patriots’ who are led by the President of the United States, operating under the guise of ‘Solidus Snake’.
Essentially an OAP at this point, thanks to the accelerated ageing as a result of the genetic engineering process which created him, Solid Snake has just one thing left to do on his bucket list – put his old arch-enemy, Liquid Ocelot (formerly known as Revolver Ocelot), firmly six feet under the ground for good. In a hostile world filled with militant AIs, Solid Snake fights his way from one war zone to the next in a bid to stop Liquid Ocelot from taking control of these deadly AIs and basically ‘doing a Skynet’.
After a final scrap that finally ends the life of Liquid Ocelot, Solid Snake retreats from public view as the full breadth and width of the Patriot’s conspiracy is revealed. Realising that Big Boss was kept in a coma after the events of Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake by the Patriots, Solid Snake tracks his old commanding officer, only to be told that the FOXDIE biological agent, which runs through his veins, won’t have time to mutate and turn Solid Snake into a walking biological weapon. With those words, Big Boss dies (for real, this time), and Solid Snake decides to spend whatever time he has left living in peace.
With the Snake dynasty and everything tied with FOXDIE, Revolver Ocelot and the Patriots now a thing of the past, Raiden finds himself confronting a very different world just four years later. Now, a fully kitted-out, katana-wielding cyborg ninja under contract with a private military company, Raiden is pitted against the nefarious Senator Armstrong, a nano-machined powered soldier who, in turn, has thrown his lot in with a dangerous rival military outfit called ‘Desperado’ in a bid to upend the global order.
From Cold War betrayals to futuristic AI warfare, the Metal Gear series has delivered one of gaming’s most ambitious and emotionally complex timelines. Whether you’re tracing Big Boss’s descent into villainy or Solid Snake’s fight against fate, each chapter adds another layer to this sprawling, operatic saga. And if diving into the story has you nostalgic for the series’ most unforgettable moments, be sure to check out our look at the best Metal Gear Solid 3 boss fights, which showcase the series at its most creative and intense. For those drawn to the franchise’s legendary rogues’ gallery, our roundup of the best Metal Gear Solid villains explores the complex, charismatic antagonists who helped make Metal Gear a stealth-action epic unlike any other.
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