News: Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol. 2 Announced

[starschwar]

Here's my two cents on Portable Ops:

It -was- canon. At the time it was made, through its blink-and-you-miss-it imagery reference in Guns of the Patriots, it was intended to be part of the core canon.

At some point soon thereafter, Kojima became dissatisfied with it, and it was demoted. Almost nothing that happens in that game ever comes up again - including the character whose alias, "Ghost" really should have considering how important he is! I'm phrasing it this way for the sake of anyone who hasn't played the game yet.

Now, that doesn't mean -nothing- in Portable Ops happened. Indeed, parts do! The post-credit phone call is mostly accurate to what happened later. And Peace Walker confirms that Snake did -something- at San Heironymo.

Of course, a taped conversation with Ocelot in Phantom Pain severely contradicts the ending of Portable Ops - but when hasn't Metal Gear contradicted itself? The second MSX game says that the entire world disarmed itself of nukes by the end of 1999 and we know that isn't true!

I think the healthiest approach is to treat any and every part of Portable Ops as "canon unless contradicted". If any of the Kojima games that followed provide any information that contradicts with Portable Ops, the later information is what "really" happened. If the rest fits, its okay. I think Kojima himself once said that the broad strokes happened, it just wasn't a literal depiction. Think of Portable Ops as the Patriots' "memetic" version of the San Heironymo incident, and the real truth is lost to time.