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What makes reading Destiny Codex entries on a website fundamentally different to reading Destiny Codex entries in game? It breaks story immersion. You have to actively stop playing the game to search out this information to bring context to things. It also breaks your connection with the main character. The reason why plot twists and such work is because you find them out at the same time as the protagonist. But in this case, you find out all this information after Snake does because he was there when the tape was recorded. And you're listening to it while he's just stood around on Mother Base, or sat chillin' in the helicopter. Hell, I don't mind the IDEA of the tapes. If you forgot a plot point or whatever and want to go back to remind yourself about it, they're great for that. But at least have us actually THERE during the recording session. They actually do this a couple of times, when interrogating Huey, and then again with Eli, and it's MUCH more impactful as a story device. This is what the codec conversations were, and what the tapes aren't. Because it's not what the previous MGS games did. I bought this game for the classic MGS experience, and it did not deliver. MGS3 was MGS + other stuff, with the stamina bar, with the surgery screen, with the camo switching, with the animal trapping. And it felt great because the core gameply was unchanged. You had one goal, one villain, and the entire game was building up to you getting face to face with them for a good old fashioned showdown. MGS5 had a bunch of padded missions that were either remixes of previous missions, only with added prefixes such as [Total Stealth] or whatever, or missions that were straight up "Well, we're after Skull Face, but we don't know where he is yet, so lets just go and eliminate this random dude because somebody has paid us to do it." How much of a shitstorm would have been caused if, back when Hyrule Warriors was first released, it was announced that it was actually the next canonical entry in the Zelda universe? It was a fun game and I enjoyed it, just like many others did (Shit, you even got to play AS GANON, which was a surprising change). But enough for it to sit in the main timeline? No. Nobody would have liked that. Keep Hyrule Warriors as a spin-off, leave the mainline for the REAL Zelda games. That's how I feel about MGS5. It should have been a spin-off.

If you only want the very basic story details, then yes, you can skip the tapes entirely. If you want things to actually make sense, you need to listen to them. The Metal Gear Solid mainline games have always been about giving you all of the story beats - major, subtle, and otherwise - on a plate, when they would make the most impact. To be fair, you don't have to go back to mother base after every mission, you can just leave the area. You DO have to get in the helicopter though to accept new missions, and to build new platforms on mother base. Most of my complaint about this issue could be fixed by just letting you select the next mission while you're on the ground, and then riding there or something. The fact that you HAVE to travel to some sort of 'mission hub' every time is why I'm calling it a shitty version of the GTA mission system. The Metal Gear Solid mainline games have always been about letting the gameplay flow from one place to another without unnecessary interruption. I enjoy this kind of gameplay system as well. I love survival games, and I love games where you have to grind your way up a tech tree to get better stuff. It does not belong in a Metal Gear Solid mainline game though. This is why I don't like it. Look, when Metroid Prime was first announced, I imagine a few people were concerned about it. A 2D sidescroller being turned into a FPS? That's not what Metroid is! But they kept the core gameplay faithful to the sidescrollers. You were doing the exact same things, you were looking for system upgrades, which would let you access areas you couldn't get to before, secret areas with health upgrades,etc. It still FELT like a Metroid game, just in 3D and from a first-person perspective. If the only change in MGS5 was that it was open world, but everything else was kept the same, I would have far fewer complaints against it. But SO many things were changed, it no longer feels like a MGS game to me. There are no codec convos, there are no awesome boss fights (it has, what, 2 bosses?), certainly no interesting bosses, there is no interesting main villain, there is no interesting setting, gameplay is broken up in to chunks. If you can see past these things, if you don't see an issue in the first place, that's fine. But most of the things that I play an MGS game for are not in this game. I mean, there isn't really much more to explain. There are missions listed in the 'optional' mission list, that are actually 'mandatory'. You want more details than that? ?

No, it doesn't. And it only ties in at the very VERY end, but not because of anything important that happened during the game. What happens to Sahelanthropus after Eli (Young Liquid) and the Third Child (Young Psycho Mantis) take it? What happens to the vial of the English Voice Parasite that they take? Nothing happens to these points. They're immediately dropped. Yes, I know the 'True' ending has both be bombed to hell and back, but you only see that if you bought the collectors edition in a video. As far as the game is concerned, it ends after Quiet says goodbye and you find out that you're not actually Big Boss which, yes, is how it ties in to the rest of the series (Venom Snake dies in Metal Gear, the Real Big Boss survives, etc). No, instead you're dropped into a location and told to navigate around enemies within a preset area that follow strict and predictable patrol paths. Wait... No you don't. Of all your companions, D-Dog is the only one who is actually any good, and he let's you know if anyone is within a certain range of you (I forget the exact distance). You don't need to scout anything. Just crouch-walk your way everywhere, tranq everyone you come across and fulton them out. Easy. I'm being completely serious. Have you played Metal Gear Survive? It's actually a solid survival game. At least it knows what it wants to be. MGS5 suffers from a major identity crisis. Is it a stealth game? Is it an action-adventure game? Is it a crafting game? It's trying to be all of these things. Here are my main issues with MGS5: 1. The story reveals: Everyone had an issue with the hour-long codec sequences of the older games, but at least they told you the story as you were going along, filling you in on everything. You have to actively go out of your way to listen to very specific tapes if you want to be brought up to speed. Want to know who the Man On Fire is? Listen to a tape. Want to know if Eli is Venom Snakes clone? Listen to a tape. Want to know what happened to Chico and Paz? On a tape. Which ones? Fuck knows, they're in the list somewhere. Look for the yellow ones. 2. The gameplay loop: This was very disjointing, and probably annoyed me the most. Select a mission from the list, get dropped somewhere, finish mission, get picked up, watch credits, get debriefed, repeat. It just doesn't flow at all, and it's this is which grinds my 'doesn't feel like MGS' gears the most. I can put up with having to actually search for the story. I can live with essentially having infinite ammo now thanks to the air-support. But don't split the campaign up into an extremely shitty version of the way GTA does it. Just... don't. 3. The weapon crafting/upgrading system What? Why? Why do I have to search out certain plants to make a better tranq gun? Shit, why do I need to do this to make a tranq sniper-rifle in the first place? I also have to kidnap a certain number of skilled people, and build more Mother Base platforms so I can house these people, to level up that department in order to research this gun? Are we actually inventing these weapons? 4. Important Side-Ops More of a minor gripe, this. But you know the side-ops I'm talking about. The yellow ones. Side-ops are supposed to be optional, but if you want to actually finish the game, you HAVE to do the yellow side-ops. Don't put mandatory story missions in the 'optional missions' list. Dragon Age Inquisition does something similar to this as well, and it's annoying as shit.

MGS3 gets my vote for favorite game in the series. The story, setting, characters and everything about it nothing short of brilliance. The only gripe I have with the game is needing to constantly keep going in to the menu system to change camo. If they had a system in place where you automatically changed to the camo that gave you the highest stealth percentage, it would have made the game absolutely flawless. For worst game, MGS5 takes it for me. It changed FAR too much from the Metal Gear formula where it didn't even FEEL like a Metal Gear game. It was more like if Kojima had made a Red Dead Redemption style game with a story that goes absolutely fucking nowhere. I was playing through it again recently, forcing myself to finish it just to say that I had, and I realised that I would actually rate Metal Gear Survive more than MGS5.