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To mark Konami’s release of Metal Gear Solid: The Legacy Collection, which contains every canon Metal Gear game so far,* Post Arcade illuminates why the series is important.

Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima isn’t known as the most subtle of storytellers.

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The series’ most vociferous critics point out that Kojima is seemingly obsessed with showing instead of telling in his games, using n0n-interactive cut-scenes to play out long-winded speechifying from glorified G.I. Joe characters.

This is all true, in a way. Kojima does like a long-winded cut-scene, and his characters do a whole lot of speechifying on a number of topics.

But that isn’t the only — or even most important — way the Metal Gear series tells its story.

The best way that Metal Gear tells its story is through its gameplay mechanics.

This can be seen in its purest form in the first Metal Gear Solid.

Roughly, Metal Gear Solid is broken into two types of gameplay: sections where you’re sneaking around trying not to be spotted, and sections after you’ve been spotted when you’re in a fight for your life. While the controls are ostensibly the same between the two different sections, they play almost completely differently from each other.