There are so many canon Metal Gear games that it can be hard to keep track of all of them. In addition to the older Metal Games for the MSX and the numbered Metal Gear Solid entries, there are also two PSP games true fans should play in order to get a full picture of the lore.
Released in 2006 and 2010 respectively, the portable spin-offs Portable Ops and Peace Walker are smaller stealth-action games which introduced many mechanics 2015’s The Phantom Pain would later expand upon. In terms of story, these two games shed light on the overarching plot, telling us about events and characters we otherwise would not know.
10 Portable Ops - Sokolov Is Still Alive
Naked Snake is tasked with rescuing Sokolov in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, but ultimately fails this task. In a cutscene Colonel Volgin appears to beat the scientist to death off camera. Portable Ops reveals that Sokolov lived through the incident and shows up to help Naked Snake. He does not show up in any game afterwards, so we like to think he lived out the rest of his days with his wife and family in the United States.
9 Portable Ops - Colonel Campbell Worked With Big Boss
Campbell is first introduced in Metal Gear 2 and has since been an important person in Solid Snake’s corner. Portable Ops shows the character during his younger days. The game, which takes place in 1970, sees Campbell as the surviving member of a squad of Green Berets helping Snake through the conflict. We wonder if he ever brought this up to Solid Snake.
8 Portable Ops - The CIA Director’s Death
Revolver Ocelot is mostly absent from both of these games, but he plays a small role in Portable Ops. In his quest to find the Philosophers and see the Boss’s vision come to life, he kills the director of the CIA; the same one from the end of Metal Gear Solid 3.
In addition to this, Revolver Ocelot also shows up as a recruitable character, but only after you have beaten the game at least once.
7 Portable Ops - Founding Of Foxhound
Fox had been around for a long time by 1970, but Foxhound is nowhere in sight. Only by the end of the game does Naked Snake found the legendary unit that would go on to play such a large role in the future. The army you recruit throughout Portable Ops ends up becoming Foxhound. By 1974, he has already abandoned it and formed MSF with Kaz Miller, as we see in the beginning of Peace Walker.
6 Portable Ops - Gray Fox’s Origins
Gray Fox is in the 1987 debut entry, and his importance in the plot grows throughout the sequel and Metal Gear Solid. He then drops out of the picture due to his tragic death, but Portable Ops reveals more about his upbringing.
The mysterious ninja, Null, turns out to be this very same character, and Naked Snake recalls the character’s childhood. Frank Jaeger was a child soldier in Mozambique who would often lull enemies into a false sense of security before brutally killing them.
5 Peace Walker - How Snake Met Kaz
It is funny to think about, but until Peace Walker, Metal Gear 2 was the only time we actually see Miller. In Metal Gear Solid Master Miller was revealed to be Liquid Snake in disguise the whole time. In Peace Walker, Kaz and Naked Snake talk about how the two met. Kaz was doing some work in Colombia training revolutionaries before his unit was ambushed by Snake. Kaz nearly died, but the two still ended up becoming friends.
4 Peace Walker - Huey Meeting Dr. Strangelove
If you only played the numbered entries, you only know Dr. Strangelove as Huey Emmerich’s ex-wife. Ex-wife because Huey kills her by locking her inside an AI pod to suffocate. She plays a large part in Peace Walker, spending her time trying to make an AI of the Boss, going so far as to torture Naked Snake to learn more information about operation Snake Eater. Her death is just one of a string of tragedies in the Phantom Pain.
3 Peace Walker - Kaz Was A Womanizer
In The Phantom Pain, Kaz is wildly different than who we see in Peace Walker. After losing his arm, leg, sight, and spending years in confinement, he is simply obsessed with revenge. In Peace Walker, he is more easygoing and lighthearted. He was also a huge womanizer, and his endeavors sometimes gave him bodily injuries or caused conflict with people on Mother Base. It’s easy to wonder if Kaz regained any parts of his former self in between Phantom Pain and Metal Gear 2.
2 The First Outer Heaven
In Metal Gear, the base Solid Snake infiltrates is called Outer Heaven, a haven for soldiers outside of society that does not belong to any country. While never directly called Outer Heaven, Naked Snake uses these words in Portable Ops and Peace Walker and we see this idea birthed throughout both games. Both titles, Peace Walker especially, go a long way towards understanding why Snake became the villain we see in the MSX titles.
1 Peace Walker - Paz’s Betrayal
The objective of Ground Zeroes, the prologue chapter to Phantom Pain, is to rescue Paz and Chico. If you did not play Peace Walker, you have little information about these two characters. Ground Zeroes does a good job of filling you in, but it is better to see it directly by playing the 2010 PSP spin-off. The character is extremely complicated, and it is worth seeing the relationship between her and the rest of Mother Base. It makes Ground Zeroes even more meaningful.
