Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-25090680-20160918142941/@comment-2112031-20161006185710

Weedle McHairybug wrote:

The Wikia Editor wrote:

Weedle McHairybug wrote:

The Wikia Editor wrote:

Weedle McHairybug wrote:

The Wikia Editor wrote: I suggest you play it the way you personally think will most benefit your enjoyment. I would personally suggest chronological order, mostly because MGS V is a rather disappointing conclusion to the series, with MGS 4 being much more appropriate as a finale and MGR being a pretty decent continuation.

There are plenty of retcons here and there, but most of them are retcons about stuff that was only mentioned in manuals (e.g. Big Boss losing his eye in the late 1980s, Gray Fox being the last person to have the "Fox" codename, as opposed to being the only one).

The only one that really jumped out at me was when Liquid Ocelot stated that Big Boss was in his late 50s when his sons were created, but was later stated to have been 37 at the time. I personally chalk that one up to Liquid not knowing Big Boss' actual age due to deliberate misinformation. Eh, the manuals, at least for MG2, were literally required for completing the game (in the latter case, it's because of the manual being the only source to look up how to translate Madnar's tap code frequency, that and Roy Campbell's third and final frequency), so it's still pretty big. And I'm pretty sure they effectively retconned Master Miller's name despite Miller explicitly stating his name was "McDonnell Miller" in Metal Gear Solid with Snake not even being remotely suspicious. There were also other egregious retcons to the entries as well, several which actually originated from the games. I think it's arguable whether the stuff in the manuals getting retconned is "big". It was just there for the sake of giving the characters backstories, it was never mentioned nor became relevant in-game. Changing the small details (e.g. when Big Boss lost his eye) doesn't change or affect anything that happened in the game, or later games for that matter.

There's no real explanation for why Miller uses a different name in his later life, there are plenty of reasons we can think of (as mentioned by the person above), so it's not a big deal. The manuals should not have even bothered giving backstories at all, then. The point of an instruction manual is to have the player learn the items, the characters as a brief blurb, and especially how to use the controls to get through the game. Either they keep the backstories as is, or don't bother at all. Had it been me making the game, I'd make sure the only things that are in the instruction manuals are what commands to input and what certain items do, as well as what certain characters, no backstories at all especially if they are not big anyways. It's basically a matter of hindsight. Kojima has explicitly stated in interviews that, if it made for a better story, he was willing to retcon small details in order to fit it in his current story. In MGS3, he retconned the time period in which Big Boss lost his eye as well as when he became sterile (the manuals stated that it was due to injuries from combat), among other things.

Retconning events from manuals that, at the time, had not even been released outside of Japan, is honestly not that big a deal, especially when you consider that later manuals retconned stuff from earlier manuals (such as Big Boss' reason for founding FOXHOUND). Yeah, I know, and quite frankly, the only time a retcon is perfectly okay is if the game franchises have each game being 100% self contained (like Final Fantasy. Name me one game that actually connects with either the previous installment or the next one? Dissidia doesn't count, BTW.). There's a forum about the possible connections between the Final Fantasy games. One notable possible connection is that FFX features a character named Shinra, a technological prodigy, and FFVII features the Shinra Electric Power Company as the main antagonists, suggesting that FFVII could take place many centuries after FFX.

Anyway, pretty much any long running series is bound to deal with retcons at some point or another, especially when the author is willing to change small details for the sake of the story.