The Complete METAL GEAR SOLID Timeline Explained!

the Metal Gear Solid franchise features one of the most extensive and elaborate timelines in all of gaming konami's epic Espionage series unfurls its dense narrative across 11 games with an alternate history timeline that spans from the height of the Cold War in the 1960s through to a neo-futuristic take on the 21st century it's big it's bold and it is absolutely unequivocally undeniably Bonkers and we wouldn't have it any other way but exactly does it all tie together well the short answer is it's messy the long answer however well that's going to take some time to fully explain to make matters even more complicated there are a fair few games that aren't considered Canon including Metal Gear acid and snake's revenge and well the less said about Metal Gear survive the better so don't expect that nonsense on this timeline regardless this is going to be a long and detailed timeline so strap yourselves in my name's Adam and this is the complete Metal Gear Solid timeline fully explained foreign [Music] Metal Gears epic narrative kicks off in the height of the Cold War right in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis which takes on something of a slightly different context within the universe of Snake Eater after the U.S successfully rescues a defected Soviet rocket scientist by the name of Nikolai stepanovich stokolov the Russians retaliate by setting up a nuclear camp on the island of Cuba and much like the real world chain of events the Soviet Union eventually agrees to remove their nuclear presence in an exchange of sorts you see the Soviets want dear old circle of back because of a little something known as project shaggerhod a tank-like vehicle armed the teeth with nuclear weaponry which could be primed to strike anywhere in the world and this is the context with which we first drop into the world of Metal Gear Solid fast forward two years to 1964 and we hit the main events of the first chronological game in the franchise Snake Eater the US has green lit a mission to extract sokolov once again before he can complete his work on shagarhod to this end they instruct major zero to lead a mission Behind Enemy Lines and he sets up new CIA unit known as Fox to complete what they dubbed The Virtuous mission on the team are paramedic no guesses for what role they fill a veteran Soldier simply known as the boss Moore and her in a little bit and the player character of Jack a former people of the boss who goes by the slightly awkward code name naked snake snake infiltrates behind Soviet lines and without much in the way of hassle at all is able to secure sokolov but here's the rub he's not the only one after the in demand scientist you see the pair are soon ambushed by a baby-faced major ocelot a fella who will be cropping up in a fair whack of this timeline ocelot and his troops attempt to take sokolov by force but they're as effective as a light Breeze against snake CQC skills and the pair Escape without harm they don't escape from their next Ambush though which for stake at least comes completely out of left field the boss suddenly appears and instead of helping snake complete his mission she reveals that she has defected to their Soviet counterparts and is taking sokolov with her her comrades actually turn out to be the military Intel Legends agency Gru who are attempting to seize power in the Soviet Union for themselves and they want sokolov and his shaggerhod in order to do this treasonous little band is led by a lad called volgan who has also recruited the legendary Cobra unit a band of superpower troops that were led by the boss back in World War II anyway the boss makes off with sokolov and a pair of massive Rockets called um Davey crocketts and the so-called virtuous Mission ends with snake left for dead and Vulcan using one of the Davy crockets to blow a nuclear hole in the middle of the Russian Wilderness ouch and that's just the first hour of the game we've only just got to the not a bond song title credits okay so U.S Soviet relations are obviously quite strained at this point with a small matter of a nuclear bomb detonating on Russian soil exacerbating the situation the Soviet president Khrushchev calls his U.S counterpart President Johnson to tell him as much and a little more and by a little more I mean threatening nuclear war with America they come to a little deal to get around this squabbling whereby the US government has to effectively prove that they didn't have anything to do with the nuclear detonation this amounts to another mission into the Russian jungle to eliminate volgan and the boss recover the remaining Davy Crockett and rescue circle of once again does this Mission have a cool zoning code name you bet your hat does operation Snake Eater so snake crash lands back into the Soviet Union once again and makes his way to meet up with his contact on the ground a lad called Adam who was a defected American spy which I guess technically makes him a double agent anyway Adam is a no-show and snake instead rendezvous with his counterpart Eva in a sequence that has not aged well at all you know what I'm talking about anyway Eva and snake fight off another attack from the ocelot unit before snake systematically kills off every last member of Cobra unit on his way to rescuing sokolov on Route he bumps into a scientist known as grannin who's somewhat disillusioned as his own bipedal tank project has been thrown by the wayside in favor of sokolo shaggerhod don't worry lad I have a feeling that that project will have quite the Legacy in this franchise Gran indirect snake to the shaggerhod but he's captured on the way by volgin who then beats poor sokolov to death and torches snake to within an inch of his life a process that sees him lose an eye despite his injuries snake manages to escape with the help of Eva and makes a beeline for the shaggerhod to destroy the late sokolovs project Vulcan intervenes and well this is where the plot thickens you see Vulcan lets snake in on a little secret and tells him all about an organization known as the philosophers which is essentially a bunch of Richlands from the U.S China and the Soviet Union long story short they masterminded victory over the Nazis during World War II before amassing a fortune in cash known as the Philosopher's Legacy unsurprisingly all that money drove them a little bit mad and the Legacy was broken up with some of it finding its way into volgin's hands this is all just a Prelude to a great big bloody fight between snake and volgin though which ends with the latter being killed supposedly by of all things a bolt of lightning but we are not done yet there are at least three double crosses left in this twisty tale of Espionage next on snake's Hit List is the boss and while he's hesitant to pull the trigger he eventually does so but not before she's able to give him an all-important microfilm of critical info on the Legacy a microfilm which is then stolen by Eva after a night together with snake you see Eva reveals her true colors as a spy working for the Chinese who want the Legacy for themselves but twist within a Twist she also reveals that the boss was actually ordered to defect to volgan by the Americans to secure the Legacy as well and it's this twist that hits the hardest as it means that the boss effectively sacrificed herself as a U.S traitor to help prove America's innocence okay we are nearly done with the Snake Eater but finally let's tie up some loose ends firstly for a job well done snake has granted the title of big boss but he ultimately ends up demoralized for his part in operation Snake Eater and he quits Fox unit and then there's the Curious Case of ocelot who it turns out is actually a triple agent while he was masquerading around as part of the gru he was actually operating as a double agent for their Rivals the KGB but he was actually actually really working for the CIA as the defected spy Adam in an attempt to secure the Philosopher's Legacy which he does well half of it at least the other half he keeps for himself along with grannon's bipedal tank plans which goes by the name of metal gear by the way but we'll get to that in due time [Music] okay next up we fast forward six years to the San Geronimo crisis that makes up the action of Metal Gear Solid portable Ops snake's old team Fox unit has gone Rogue and are now led by a wildly charismatic Commander called Gene I say wildly charismatic as he's literally been artificially created to be the perfect Commander as a result of the successor project a scheme designed to produce soldiers in the image of the boss he's aided by Lieutenant Cunningham as well as a woman called Elisa who has significant psychic abilities and a split personality known as Ursula Elisa and Ursula are pretty black and white in their allegiances Elisa is on snakeside while Ursula bats for Fox anyway the game kicks off at Gene's base of operations on the San Geronimo Peninsula with poor old Snake once again being tortured this time at the hands of Lieutenant Cunningham who's trying to ascertain the location of the missing half of the Philosopher's Legacy as we've established snake hasn't got a Scooby and he's chucked back into a cell where he gets chatting to a Green Beret called Roy Campbell anyway the pair of spec otherwise there wouldn't be a game and snake attempts to make contact with his old CEO major zero but instead reaches his old teammates paramedic and second who aided him on operation Snake Eater they detailed a snake that he's now seen as a traitor to the us and that the only way he can clear his name is if he takes down Gene's Fox unit rebellion and destroys the Prototype Metal Gear tank and so snake's mission to take down Gene basically makes up for the rest of the narrative of portable Ops but this is a metal gear solid game and nothing's really that simple you see a snake undertakes his mission he discovers a fair few Revelations along the way firstly Lieutenant Cunningham is actually a double agent working for the Pentagon in an attempt to undermine the CIA and gain the upper hand as the leading Security Agency in the U.S he reveals this to snake while detailing that his plan is to push gene into launching a nuke at the Soviet Union in an attempt to prolong the Cold War secondly the good Dr sokolov isn't dead yeah somehow he survived his ordeal in the Soviet Union and is now masquerading as a character known as go post who offers Intel on the metal gears to snake thirdly and perhaps most importantly snake learns of Gene's ultimate plan a plan to launch a nuke on the US to destroy the philosophers in a bid to create his own nation of soldiers known as Army's Heaven naturally this plan doesn't come to fruition as snake kills Gene but with his dying breath Gene hands over all his funds and info on Army 7 to snake oh and I can't forget Elisa and her psychic abilities in the wake of aiding snake she's murdered by Gene but she also has critical info to hand over during her die moments she foretails that the children of the big boss who she calls Liz on fonteribla will come to destroy and save the world which are both events that we will eventually get to in the meantime we catch back up with ocelot who is now a quadruple agent I guess as he murders his old boss the director of Central Intelligence before stealing the remaining half of the Philosopher's Legacy and in a cheeky post-credit sting during a conversation with major zero the pair hatch a plan to use the Legacy to Kickstart a new project known as a project that ocelot agrees to on one condition that big boss joins the team too everything right before we Barrel on into the next entry on the franchise there's a few important details to set up like you know the birth slash creation of Solid Snake and his evil twin liquid so Cipher begins in Earnest in the wake of the events of portable Ops and major zero starts to build a team and an ideal around creating a United World zero builds this ideology around big boss's Mythic status as the perfect Soldier and so he becomes the symbol of sorts for Cipher only as time goes on Big Boss starts to drift from this ideal and he starts to become more and more wary of major Zero's leadership terrified of losing his perfect mascot zero authorizes a project known as lizon fonteribla which uses big boss's DNA to create a pair of clones known as Eli and David or to call them by their more popular code names liquid snake and Solid Snake twins are separated with solid staying in the U.S and liquid growing up in the UK before he escapes to Africa to get away from Cipher but beyond that a third clone was created at a later date and this strapping young creation was called solidar snake and he constituted the perfect Recreation of big boss's DNA speaking of big boss he is in best plays when he discovers the liaison form project and this prompts him to hand in his notice so to speak to Cipher and go freelance and by freelance I mean set up his own rival group known as the military song Frontier or msf an organization that plays a key role in the next game on the timeline foreign it's four years on since the events of portable Ops and we find ourselves in 1974 for Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker with big boss now heading up the msf as a small mercenary outfit they get a bit of business coming their way from a university Professor called Ramon galvezmina and one of his students known as Paz the pair are Keen to hire the msf to look into a military faction that has started causing Havoc across Costa Rica Big Boss refuses at first believing Ramon to be a KGB spy but he's quickly won over by a recent voice recording they play him that supposedly proves that his mentor the boss is still alive despite the fact that he um killed her over a decade ago the tantalizing mystery of the boss's potential Resurrection Spurs Big Boss into action and he gets on the case boss hightails it to Costa Rica and immediately sniffs out the marauding Army which leads him right onto the tracks of one of peacewalker's big bads a ladder that goes by the ridiculous name of hot cold man alongside Hart Coleman Big Boss discovers a project code named peacewalker which is basically a giant four-leg nuclear a launch system Big Boss does some good old-fashioned infiltrating and he encounters Huey Emerick one of the peace Walkers designers who eventually agrees to help him and handily points him in the direction of one doctor Strangelove not that one big boss finds Strangelove and discovers that the AI system behind the Peace Walker has been modeled on his old Mentor the boss hence the mysterious new recording that freaked him out in the game's beginning Big Boss chases the Peace Walker across the border and into Nicaragua where he finally confronts hot Goldman and it turns out that Coleman has created peacewalker to guarantee the US's nuclear retaliation as an impartial launch system devoid of human intervention he also plans to fire off a nuke to prove this Theory and it's this drastic moment that the facility is overrun by Soviet soldiers who are led by Ramon Galvez who shock twist turns out to be Vladimir zodornov zodornov wants the peacewalker for himself and he makes a move to seize it only for a second intervention in the form of the msf who tear into the building big boss is able to leverage the chaos to his advantage and he moves to destroy the peacewalker but not to the extent that it can't fire its nuclear payloads and while Coleman is near death from wounds received in the battle he's able to activate a launch Uplink which convinces the U.S government that they're about to face a nuclear strike from the Soviet Union cue a lot of frantic intense conversations where big boss tries to convince the U.S military's big brass that it's all just a ploy to get them to retaliate and Kickstart a nuclear war but all of this is a moot point anyway as the peace Walker's damaged AI is overrun by the boss's personality which sinks the four-legged Behemoth in a nearby lake nullifying the threat completely that was the definition of a close call but as this is a metal gear game there's one more twist in this tale and that's the true intentions behind zodornov's supposed student pass you see with all said and done zadornoff has been prison back at the msf base in the Caribbean Sea during an attempted breakout from sedonov big boss tries to intercept him and ends up shooting the Russian spy but this is all just a Prelude to the main event which kicks off when Paz seizes the controls of another metal gear which is known as Zeke you see it turns out that Paz is actually an agent for Cipher and on the orders of major zero has come to present and ultimatum to Big Boss relinquish control of the msf decipher or see the organization branded as terrorists she backs up this ultimatum with the threat of her nuclear launch on the Eastern Seaboard which will see the msf singled out as the perpetrators none of this comes to pass though as big boss does Big Boss things and takes down Metal Gear Zeke which also throws Paz out of the cockpit and into the sea okay before we head on Into The Madness of this Metal Gear Solid 5 we need to talk about a lad called skull face we'll have quite the impact across the next few entries in this timeline so skull face has actually been knocking about for a while by this point but to keep things ticking I thought it best to compile his own little timeline here you see skull face has been operating in the background right since the very beginning during the events of Snake Eater as the commander of the covert CIA team xof unit orbs off skull face was working behind the scenes to offer support for The Virtuous and Snake Eater missions after the fox unit was officially disbanded major zero offered skull face a role with Cipher which saw him lead Zero's personal Strike Force but as the years went on skull face grew a deep hatred for zero as well as his perfect Soldier big boss and this led him to seek out opportunities to strike back against them all of which leads us to [Music] next up on the timeline is Metal Gear Solid 5 ground zeros which takes place in 1975 just a few short months after the events of peacewalker skull face has fully gone off the rails and he and his soft forces have taken control of an American prison Base in Cuba called Camp Omega tensions are naturally High between skull face and his Rivals at Cipher and the Big Boss run msf and this leads to zof kidnapping the presumed dead Cipher agent Paz who would survived her ordeal at the end of peacewalker to complicate matters another msf agent and Ally the former Child Soldier Chico has been captured by zof during his attempts to rescue Paz big boss and his msf co-founder and Ally kazuhira Miller decide to hatch an exfiltration of both of them in fear that either Paz or chico could release information that could compromise the msf Q a classic big boss infiltration of Camp Amiga long story short big boss rescues both Chico and Paz and the trio Escape in an msf helicopter only on route back to the msf mother base they discover that Farmers being planted in paz's stomach prompting an msf medic to perform a mad ad hoc operation to remove it right there on the helicopter only it's out of the frying pan and Into the Fire for boss and the chopper as when they arrive back in mother base it's under attack from soft forces boss and the chopper crew are able to land and rescue a handful of msf Staff members along with Kaz Miller but as they escape the crumbling base another wrench is thrown into the works in the form of another bomb inside Paz Paz sacrifices herself and jumps out of the helicopter just as the bomb explodes which causes the chopper to crash into a zof helicopter that's in Pursuit the resulting Collision sees big boss kazmilla and the msf medic severely injured but they survived the ordeal and are rescued and rushed to a hospital in Cuba where boss and the medic slip into deep Comas [Music] and so we come up to the biggest Gap in this timeline so far a nine-year Hiatus that leads up to the events of the phantom pain okay so big boss finally awakens from his coma in 1984 to a very different world to the one he left in 1975. for starters there has been a good deal of skullduggery behind the scenes on behalf of the franchise's new Big Bad skull face not only has he been conducting dubious Research into a slew of nasty parasites that give their hosts superhuman abilities one of which he uses to send major zero into a crippling vegetative state but he has also created a giant new metal gear like Behemoth called silentropus in short he's been busy anyway back to Big Boss who wakes up from his coma in a British Military Hospital in Cyprus he has to Spring to action immediately to foil an assassination tempt on his life from a mute Cipher killer called quiet all before he's rescued by a heavily bandaged man called Ishmael don't forget Ishmael he's very important boss escapes the hospital by the skin of his teeth and that's no tall order seeing as he's happy against two of skull Face's superhumans the third child who will grow up to be iconic Metal Gear Solid villain psychomantis and the Man on Fire the revived form of snake eater's big bad vulgin whose sheer hatred for big boss has manifested itself as well a Man on Fire anyway forget about villains old and new for now as bosses recovered from the hospital by his old Frenemy Revolver Ocelot who fills him in about the hot new mercenary group on the scene the Diamond Dogs which is led by boss's old acquaintance Kaz Miller Big Boss takes on a brand new code name of venom snake and sets about his new mission of unearthing the whereabouts of Cipher the outfit he believes responsible for his attempted assassination this new campaign takes him to the war-torn deserts of Afghanistan and Angola as snake recruits friends and enemies both old and new including Dr Huey Emerick his accomplice from Peace Walker and quiet the mute assassin that tried to kill him on top of this he also recruits code talker who's an expert on the parasitic infections causing all the weird super heroics because well he worked on them for Cypher lastly he also captures a young lad known as The White Mamba who turns out to be a British kid called Eli who if you can remember back to the leson fonteribla section of this timeline is actually one of the Clones of big boss a DNA test mysteriously doesn't confirm this but more on that later anyway with his ragtag team of Diamond Dogs snake slash boss discovers the truth behind Cipher which is that zero is no longer The Big Brass anymore and that skull face and his Renegade zoff Fighters are now very much in charge as I've already mentioned they've been busy in the years since snake slash boss last encountered them working on a parasite strain that will kill anyone who speaks English He couples this parasite with the threat of the Giant solanthropus and uses this heady cocktail to enact his dastardly plans this all backfires though when one of his lackeys the third child betrays him and uses his psychic powers to drive the giant Mech to attack him which mortally wounds old skull face while snaking cows who are also on the scene declined to put skull face out of his misery he's instead executed by Dr Huey Emerick okay we are starting to reach the end game of the phantom pain but there is a lot of end game in the phantom pain for starters the solanthropus along with the third child are brought back to the Diamond Dogs base in the Seychelles and that instigates a rebellion from Eli and the other rescue child soldiers at the base Eli and the third child share a psychic connection of sorts and they all escape the base with the giant Mech anyway that's the least of snakes problems as an epidemic of the vocal cord parasite has spread through the base too forcing snake to kill a good deal of his own soldiers all fingers point to Huey as the source of the epidemic and he's accused of experimenting on the parasites for use as bioweapons and stake banishes him from The Diamond Dogs and on top of all of that quiet has gone Rogue too and it turns out that's because she's also infected with the parasite the reason why she doesn't speak is purely so she doesn't spread the infection but she speaks up to save snake in the end and flees as a result never to be seen again and despite all of that the biggest reveal of all comes in the form of the real identity of venom snake who shock twist isn't actually Big Boss after all oh no instead he's the msf medic that went into a coma at the same time as big boss at the end of ground zeros you see it turns out that major zero had one more mission to fulfill and that was to ensure the safety of big boss and he pulled all the strings to perform the switcheroo and so after a good deal of plastic surgery and hypnotherapy the medic became a doppelganger of big boss to wage war and Cipher while the real big boss who is actually the bandage savior of Ishmael told you he was important went about creating his dream of a rogue military State outer Heaven yeah a lot happens in the phantom pain [Music] okay with two big bosses knocking about in a post Phantom Pain World things start to get a little confusing and that's even before the introduction of big boss's clone Sun the iconic protagonist Solid Snake the year is 1995 and a lot has happened in the Years preceding phantom pain for starters the real big boss has succeeded in creating outer Heaven which is now located in South Africa he has also come out of his long exile to rejoin the US military in a bid to set up a cover story for his nefarious operation to this end he hires an old pal called Frank Yeager who's given the code name gray fox and the pair re-established the foxhound command unit all of this is because of the rising threat of Cipher who are now going by the snazzy new name of the Patriots anyway without a heaven also proving to be quite the threat to the world's Health the CIA instructs foxhound to investigate the compound and see if the rumors of weapons of mass destruction are actually true naturally all of this takes place without the CIA knowing that it's their very own Big Boss responsible for the whole damn thing but gray fox is dispatched to investigate but he's immediately captured and imprisoned all of which sets the scene for our new hero in the franchise Solid Snake okay so Solid Snake is but a mere rookie in the ranks of fox sound at this stage completely unaware of his Origins as a clone from the lesson initiative but like father like son he successfully infiltrates Out of Heaven rescues gray fox and discovers that the base is in control of a new metal gear project long story short snake destroys the new nuclear tank and makes to escape but is confronted by Big Boss himself or more accurately his Phantom venom snake who reveals the truth behind outer Heaven's intentions yet more importantly he reveals that big boss's solid snake's biological father before detailing the Mad origins of the cloning program all of these big Revelations lead to a great big bloody fight to the death and Against All Odds solid is able to defeat venom snake and foil the real big boss's plan it's not a happy ending for solid though as despite returning to the us as a hero he leaves foxhound feeling betrayed by big bosses Web of Lies solid snake's retirement from foxhound lasts exactly four years though as he's prompted back into action for Metal Gear 2 Solid Snake the year is 1999 the cold war is still raging and the world is fighting over oil in the wake of this oil crisis a leading scientist called Dr Keo Marv Engineers a solution to the world's problems with an alternative fuel source called oylix only on route to his demonstration of OLX the good doctor is kidnapped by terrorist forces from a newly established military state known as Zanzibar land you have exactly one guess for who's behind this new rogue Nation yep big boss without a heaven ending as an embarrassing failure bosses giving his dream a second try and he aims to hold the world Ransom by monopolizing the world's oil supply and this is the reason why Solid Snake is coaxed out of retirement to infiltrate zanderbar land the infiltration doesn't exactly go smoothly though and solid eventually runs into his old pal gray fox who's still working for Big Boss armed with a new metal gear Sol it destroys the new Mech and kills his old colleague once and for all and when I say once and for all I am definitely fibbing as this is not the last we see of Gray Fox but that's a story for a little later and Metal Gear 2 all comes to a head with another confrontation with big boss the real one this time snake with absolutely no weapons left has to improvise a flamethrower from a lighter and an aerosol can and using this makeshift weapon he kills big boss as well and just like that the enigmatic Big Boss a Mainstay in this franchise since the very chronological beginning is dead and gone also afib let me explain you see the Shady Patriots still very much operating in the background recover both the bodies of big boss and gray fox and start experimenting on them they are able to reanimate the corpse of Gray Fox and they attach an exoskeleton to this monstrosity to create cyborg ninja Big Boss meanwhile is put into a form of cryostasis allowing the Patriots leader our old friend zero and his team to immortalize him as the symbol he always wanted for his organization [Music] right before we Barrel on into perhaps the most iconic entry in the franchise it's time to reacquaint ourselves with some clones you see our old mates liquid and solids have been busy in the years since we last caught up with them and by busy I mean setting up a terrorist Splinter unit of foxhound and threatening the world with nuclear Devastation and becoming the president of the United States respectively you know just normal everyday busyness anyway the pair of them effectively orchestrate the events of Metal Gear Solid which goes by the name of the Shadow Moses incident liquid and his aforementioned foxhound Splinter Group ambushed the Shadow Moses compound take a pair of high-ranking hostages and threaten the White House with nuclear Devastation all in a bed to regain the corpse of big boss which is still in the possession of the Patriots liquid's Ultimate Game Plan here is to use big boss's DNA to further perfect his band of genome soldiers many of which will meet across this section of the video president solidus is himself a secret Patriot but not an all too happy Patriot and in a bid to get back at them has actually masterminded the whole Enterprise via Revolver Ocelot with the end game of hijacking a new metal gear known as Rex but but I'm very much getting ahead of myself back to the beginning of metal gear solid and the return of Solid Snake whose coaxed out of retirement once again must be feeling sick of all this Espionage nonsense by now luckily he's not and we have the Roller King madcap story of the original Metal Gear Solid he promptly infiltrates the Shadow Moses complex and quickly recovers the first hostage the DARPA Chief Donald Anderson Anderson reveals that the metal gear Rex has been deactivated and then he out of nowhere promptly dies of a heart attack take note of this as it'll prove to be important in about a minute's time anyway on route to locating the next hostage snake is confronted by franchise stall what Revolver Ocelot prompting a boss fight that comes to a premature end when ocelot's hand is cut off by a rampaging cyborg ninja in the wake of this bizarre encounter snake rescues the next hostage the arms Tech president Kenneth Baker who briefed snake on how to stop the metal gear X before yep karking it from a heart attack while snake's success ratio for hostage rescuing is a stone cold zero percent he soldiers on regardless on his way to taking down liquid who he still doesn't know is his twin he encounters the so-called sons of big boss a team of genetically engineered super soldiers all sporting snazzy animal related names first up there's Vulcan Raven who attacks snake with a giant Cannon then there's psycho mantis who the player memorably defeats by switching their controller to the player 2 slot then there's Sniper Wolf who hunts snake across a few memorable sequences and finally decoy octopus who it turns out was in Disguise as Donald Anderson earlier on in the game and died anyway snake systematically fights and defeats all of them on route to liquid snake and a big confrontation Atop The Metal Gear X and it's here where snake discovers the big reveal about his brotherly relationship with liquid via the lesson form program you see liquid has something of a complex when it comes to his brother making him bitter due to his belief that solid has the superior genes to him his desire to gain big boss's corpse stems from his desire to achieve a genetic Purity close to his late father but it turns out he's dead wrong on all of this as we later find out that liquid actually has the superior genes to solid but they're both inferior to the perfect clone that is solidus gosh my head hurts but that's not the only Revelation from liquid as he reveals to snake that he's been infected with a virus known as Fox die which will infect and kill members of the foxhound team when he comes into contact with them oh and one last Revelation cyborg ninja reveals himself as the reanimated corpse of Gray Fox all before being crushed by the metal gear wrecks all this madness comes to a head with snake defeating liquid first in the metal gear X then via the Fox die virus during an audacious Escape in a jeep The Fallout from Metal Gear Solid which I guess is the wrong choice of word seeing is this all about averting nuclear destruction is the death of liquid and all his foxhound team the death of Gray Fox cyborg ninja and well I guess we can Chuck the dismemberment of Revolver Ocelot in there too for good measure on the ocelot front he's actually successful in his mission to get the metal gear X data back to solid a snake only ocelot does ocelot things and sells the data on the black market which prompts the Patriots to suss out solid assist plans and go after him pushing the perfect clone to become openly antagon to the organization Solid Snake meanwhile is declared dead which largely allows him to live his life however he chooses so at least that's something of a happy ending foreign next up on the timeline we head straight into Metal Gear Solid 2 Sons of Liberty which takes place in both 2007 and 2009. the 2007 section which effectively acts as the prologue of the game sees Solid Snake infiltrating an oil tanker that's been scuttled in the middle of the Hudson River and supposedly contains a new model of metal gear known as the ray solid boards the tanker which is absolutely swarming with Russian mercenaries and discovers evidence of the new metal gear only for the franchise's Bad Penny Revolver Ocelot to rock up and ruin the party he does this by basically blowing the tanker up which pollutes the Hudson with nasty oil interestingly when snake gets close to ocelot he recognizes liquid's personality emerge from the Gunslinger a bizarre side effect of an operation that saw a liquid's arm being grafted onto ocelot anyway this new liquid ocelot hybrid runs off with the new metal gear Ray and leaves the tanker to become an environmental disaster which was half the point anyway you see the whole Affair was a scheme cooked up by the Patriots to give them a legitimate cover for building a facility known as Big Shell which would officially run the cleanup operation and unofficially house a giant Fortress known as the Arsenal gear fast forward two years to 2009 and we reached the main section of The Campaign which in a shock twist sees a brand new protagonist yep Sons of Liberty see Solid Snake take a backseat to young hero in progress Raiden and Raiden is really thrown in the deep end as his first proper gig is to infiltrate the big shell facility after a terrorist raid by a group known as the Sons of Liberty sees the president taken hostage he's aided by the remnants of a Navy SEAL Team one of which calls himself pliskin which is a very on the nose reference and should immediately tells you this lad's real identity the cat comes out of the bag when pliskin reveals himself to be solid snake in the wake of an imposter Solid Snake making off with a stolen Metal Gear Ray despite all of this Raiden is able to secure the president and for his troubles is let in on a little dirty secret hiding at the core of U.S democracy which is that it's all a sham run by the Patriots the President also spills the beans on the truth behind big shell as well namely its front as the Arsenal gear which is controlled by an all-powerful AI known as GW he reveals all of this before detailing the identity of the Imposter Solid Snake who is actually our old clone power solidist snake who's now heading up a rogue anti-terrorist unit known as dead cell solidus's game plan is to hijack the Arsenal gear and overthrow the Patriots and with all these Revelations out in the open the president is promptly murdered by solidus's right-hand man ocelot and so Raiden's Mission becomes stopping solidus and destroying the Arsenal gear only things are really not that simple first things first there's the tragic story of Emma Emerick a computer programmer who helps Raiden to upload a virus into GW but is ultimately thwarted when she's stabbed by a seemingly Immortal member of dead cell known as Vamp then there's another mysterious cyborg ninja who it turns out is a Russian mercenary known known as Olga who's actually a patriot double agent herself and has been forced into helping Raiden in exchange for the safety of her child that's a lot to take in but wait there's more along the way Raiden also discovers that he was actually raised by solidus as a Child Soldier after solidus murdered his parents which naturally just prompts Raiden to double down on his mission and on top of that ocelot reveals himself as a patriot agent who's just there to make sure the Patriots ultimate plan comes to fruition a scheme called the S3 plan which aims to create an army of perfect soldiers in the image of Solid Snake by replicating the conditions of Shadow Moses while all of these big story Revelations are taking place Emma's virus actually starts to take a hold within the AI of the Arsenal gear prompting it to crash into Manhattan but another little twist comes in the form of a calm school by another AI which informs Raiden that the S3 plan's purpose is actually to control all human thought from regressing due to all the trivial junk they consume overcoming actual knowledge and this truth bomb comes with an ultimate infrareden kill solidus or Olga's child and Raiden's girlfriend Rose will die and the twisty turny antics of Sons of Liberty are finally brought to a close with Raiden making good on this ultimatum by killing solidus all before an epilogue that sees Solid Snake discovering data about the Patriots highest Council the wiseman's committee a council of people who it seems have been dead for well over a century mysterious here we are the grand finale of the whole Saga Metal Gear Solid 4 guns of the Patriots which takes place five years after Sons of Liberty in 2014. guns of the Patriots is a greatest hits of sorts of the whole franchise and brings closure to many of the series long-running narrative strands some of which date all the way back to Snake Eater the world has changed since the events of Metal Gear Solid 2 and has seen the rise of a new form of warfare led by a host of private military companies or pmcs for short the soldiers fighting Within These pmcs have undergone something of an upgrade as well now enhanced with snazzy new Nano machines that are controlled centrally by the sons of the Patriots Network system in the mix of all of this is Solid Snake who despite the Five Short years since Sons of Liberty has seemingly aged several decades his old grizzled appearance is the result of the accelerated aging that is a side effect of his cloning and by the time of Metal Gear Solid 4 he has little more than a year left to live oh and the Fox die virus that's still knocking about in his system since the original metal gear solid has also now mutated turning snake into a ticking Time Bomb of a biological weapon as he's lamenting on his lifetime of fighting at the gravesides of the boss and big boss snake is approached by his old friend Colonel Ray Campbell who has won last mission for him terminate his cloned brother liquid once again who as we've already established is living on in the consciousness of Revolver Ocelot God damn it this franchise's bonkers one key problem standing in his way though is the fact that liquid ocelot is basically the ringleader of all the pmcs across the globe and snake gets first-hand experience of this on the first stop of His World Tour to kill his brother the Middle East here he encounters an arms dealer called drebin who injects him with the same Nano machines that the PMC soldiers are using which allows snake to take control of modern technology and fight back snake's globetrotting mission to assassinate liquid takes him from the Middle East to South America and then on to Eastern Europe all before he returns to the iconic location of the Shadow Moses complex in Alaska on Route he discovers liquid's ultimate goal to track down the body of big boss in a bid to use his Superior DNA to hack into the Patriots Network system which will fully give him control over their Nano machine technology as I said earlier guns of the Patriots is a proper greatest hits album at the franchise and snake is aided by friends and foes from across the series most notably Raiden who has been transformed into the new cyborg ninja and takes a battering across the adventure then there's Eva the Spy that aided Big Boss all the way back in Snake Eater and she sort of AIDS Big Boss again in Metal Gear Solid 4 by protecting his body from liquid attacks until well she's killed by the deranged clone and big boss's body is set to light with the corpse of big boss in his possession liquid kicks off the end game of his plan and Retreats to Shadow Moses to well launch a nuke at the central Mainframe of the Patriots Network snake Raiden and Co hightail over there to stop him with Raiden losing his arm in the process and liquid pulls the rug once again by revealing his base of operations a new outer Heaven which is basically a supercharged Arsenal gear like the one seen in Sons of Liberty snake boards this new outer heaven and foils liquids Plans by uploading a virus into the core Mainframe of the Fortress which brings down the Patriots worldwide Network in the process only when he confronts his deranged brother liquid tells snake that he want to destroy the Patriots anyway and the pair finally saw all their family troubles out with a good old fight to the death which snake naturally wins as liquid dies he briefly turns back into Revolver Ocelot who is one last moment with his old rival Solid Snake before biting the bullet and this epics epics one song for solid snake comes to a close with an extended sequence back at the boss's grave where snake destroyed his lack of purpose in the world contemplates suicide he ultimately can't pull the trigger and it's a good thing too as there's a few final shock twists in the tale Chief among them the re-emergence of the actual Big Boss along with his old Commander zero who's in a vegetative state in a wheelchair boss reveals that the body being tormented throughout the main campaign was in fact the corpse of solid a snake boss's perfect clone Big Boss basically lays everything straight to snake about the history of the Patriots and the differing factions that splintered as a result of the opposing ideologies of boss and is meant to zero and his lengthy monologue comes to a close with boss effectively murdering Zero by turning off his life support but he has one last Revelation for snake which is that snake isn't a pandemic waiting to happen it turns out that the Nano machines injected into snake in the Middle East have replaced the Fox die virus running through his system which means that the snake is basically free to live the rest of his life all one year of it without fear of killing anyone he comes into contact with all except for Big Boss who succumbs to the Fox die virus there and then and finally actually dies atop the boss's grave bringing the iconic Saga of big boss and Solid Snake to a close foreign [Music] but of course that's not the end of the metal gear franchise as we have one more entry in the canonical timeline and that's Metal Gear Rising Revengeance taking place four years after the events of Guns of the Patriots revengeance continues the story of everyone's favorite tragic hero Raiden who is now sporting even more snazzy cyborg enhancements as a result of his many many injuries Raiden is now working for a PMC called Maverick doing routine VIP protection and on an assignment in Africa he's ambushed by a rival PMC known as Desperado who kills the Prime Minister he's protecting before leaving poor Raiden for dead and so this sets Raiden on a quest for the titular revengeance against the PMC that left him as a husk of a human a quest that leads him to uncovering a conspiracy with a U.S senator called Stephen Armstrong who looks like he's entered into politics after a lengthy wrestling career which I guess isn't too Preposterous an idea anyway Raiden does a fair amount of soul-searching on his way to revengeance briefly resorting to His Child Soldier Persona of Jack the Ripper But ultimately drives forward on his end goal and finally confronts Stephen Armstrong in Pakistan it's something of an unfair fight though as Armstrong is piloting a giant new metal gear Mech known as the excelsius which Raiden dispatches with his ninja blade before cutting Armstrong down to size and there you have it the Metal Gear Solid timeline explained to the best of my ability this timeline kind of melted my brain so I really hope you enjoyed this breakdown and if you like these kinds of gaming timelines definitely make sure to subscribe to Gamespot as we've got plenty more on the channel thanks a lot for watching guys I'll see you next time

Channel: GameSpot

Views: 141,112

Keywords: metal gear solid, metal gear solid timeline, metal gear timeline, metal gear solid chronology, metal gear solid timeline explained, metal gear solid explained, big boss, solid snake, naked snake, venom snake, the boss, revolver ocelot, liquid snake, solidus snake, snake eater, sons of liberty, guns of the patriots, phantom pain, peace walker, ground zeroes, metal gear solid lore, metal gear solid history, history of metal gear solid, konami, hideo kojima

Id: nNOsTC2IoNI

Length: 43min 19sec (2599 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 21 2023