Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-65.32.235.238-20130812024529/@comment-1672596-20130812125129

While obviously liberties have been taken with the comics, whether they're canon or not is ambiguous. I know they were included in the Legacy Collection despite the source material never actually being made by Hideo Kojima (which is the excuse he cited for MPO's exclusion from the collection), specifically so players could understand the story even if the player for some reason found MGS and MGS2 difficult.