Sony Breaks Down Metal Gear Solid Franchise For Its 25th Anniversary

20.10.2023 - 15:39 / gameranx.com / Sony

The longer you go as a video game franchise, the longer you’ll get to tell the story you desire, or the longer you get to impress gamers with your gameplay stylings and how you can improve things over time. For the Metal Gear Solid franchise, it’s always been about the story. Even from the game’s earliest days, you had deep stories and characters that helped make the game stand out from the crowd. The franchise is over 35 years old as a whole, but the “Solid” side is 25 years old, which got the PlayStation Blog to do a franchise breakdown.

Why? Well, there are a couple of games in the series that are coming out soon, including the Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol.1. So the blog broke down some of the games you’ll get in that collection while also reminding fans of just how far the series has come. For example, they started with the very first game in the entire franchise, which came out on the Famicom back in 1987:

“The original Metal Gear made a huge splash upon its 8-bit Japanese debut in 1987, releasing internationally a few years later. Metal Gear introduced many of the elements that would come to define the series throughout: Foxhound agent Solid Snake, the eponymous Metal Gear, and stealth-focused gameplay. Snake infiltrates several highly-armed complexes in a high-stakes rescue mission, navigating carefully to avoid detection by foes in a top-down view.”

So even from the start, Solid Snake was there. It had a deep story, focused on stealth tactics over run-and-gun gameplay, which was huge at the time, and more. Not bad, huh? Fun fact: some of the elements from this game tied into the ends of the franchise. But it wasn’t until the original PlayStation came out that things took a turn toward legendary via Metal Gear Solid:

“Using the 3D technology and the CD storage of the PlayStation, Metal Gear Solid was able to present a stunning experience, expanding tremendously on the original 8-bit gameplay and weaving an intriguing story through robust voice acting and cinematic presentation methods that had been impossible just a decade before.”

Through that title, the franchise hit another gear, pun intended, and became a mega-hit. Storyteller Hideo Kojima took the series to new heights and crafted a deep-woven story with intense gameplay elements that ensured that it lasted the test of time. Twenty-five years after the PS1 title, it’s safe to say he succeeded on that front. Check out the full blog for the full breakdown of the main series games!