I once read something about MGS 1 to 4 being about genes, memes, scenes and sense in that order. MGS1 was about how your genes do not determine who you are, MGS2 about how memes affect people, MGS3 about how scenes change people and MGS4 had to do with the sense put into things.
The Sense thing I understand is some sort of an issue with a word being hard to translate from Japanese (I think a better single word translation to English based on the lengthy explanation of what Sense in this case means would be Experience, Existence or Perception). Basically, MGS4 is about the things you can't pass on to anyone no matter what, and a big thing about MGS4 is that Solid Snake has to unfuck the world most of all because a bunch of arsemongers tried to grasp that Sense of someone (The Boss) and completely failed at it because it is impossible to do so. You can never truly know what someone else thought or felt, because you can never be the same person. Do you honestly think something like words could even begin to capsulate the way you feel (does a word like 'sad' even begin to encompass what you feel inside when you describe those feelings, are there words that could do so?) and experience? MGS1 was about genes, MGS2 was about memes, with MGS1 and MGS2 also being about what you can pass on to the future; MGS3 was about scene (as in how the time and place you live in shape you and the world around you, and its relativity and transient nature), and MGS4 was about those things that only you alone will ever know.
A lot of dum dums dislike 2 because Big Shell reuses a lot of environmental assets (even though the rooms play out very differently), and the story is 2deep5them
Whenever someone disses MGS2 I feel the urge to choke a bitch.
sexbad? brofists this
In all seriousness though, the story alongside the gameplay have always been huge draws of MGS. it was always a case where if someone hates the story, they can enjoy the great arcade stealth - or if they hate the gameplay, they can enjoy a campy, fun narrative that occasionally explores interesting issues (or other times just has poop jokes...). Alternatively, if you enjoy both (as I did in 2 and to a lesser extent 3), the games will be god-tier for the player.
In V however, there were some concessions made to the tight level design of the older games in exchange the for vast toolbox the player gets, and the narrative was also gutted to allow for the extremely high mission count and game-time. The game is gud though, and I can understand why casual non-MGS fans and journalists would give it a 10; even if personally to me it's nowhere close to a 10.
MGS deserves a huge deal of credit for video game storytelling to begin with because it's one of the rare cases where the story is meant to tell the audience something, rather than just being an account about stuff happening. And it's one of the even fewer that actually tries to use its format as a tool in itself for storytelling, what with its recurrent metafiction and synergy between story and gameplay (aforementioned Psyche gauge sometimes beyond player's control, and nudging the player to avoid violence across the entire series).
Another thing to note is that NOBODY in video gaming has done cutscenes and cinematic elements as good as Kojima and his team. Not even a contest.
EDIT:
The main thing that pisses me off about the spoilers is that. Have you ever wanted to play as the big Boss that rescued a young Sniper Wolf? The one she spoke of highly as Saladin? have you ever wanted to play as the Big boss that Naomi Hunter spoke of? the one that took her away from the battlefield and later solo infiltrated a detention camp to rescue Frank Jaeger and see that strong bond between the two soldiers?
Well this game isn't that. But I would rather have had that game and that story instead of this one.
I'm not sure if those are much material for a Big Story like you'd have in a long video game. Ultimately all these events and the past connections were about the fact that Big Boss was inseparable from war, being like an incarnation of all those Cold War conflicts. It's not so much that there was anything truly special in Sniper Wolf, Naomi, and Frank Jaeger finally coming face to face with Big Boss in those wartorn places, because wherever there was conflict Big Boss would be there as well.
Of course nowadays we know that Big Boss probably just kidnapped all of them with his Fulton balloons.
)
