How Important is the Story?

This game looks badass but I've never played an MGS game. How lost am I gonna be with the story if this is the first game I play? From what I hear, people talk about how complicated the story is and how there's a lot of cutscenes in the games. Will I still be able to enjoy the story without knowing anything going into it?

Most of the characters in MGSV will have been introduced in MGS3 or Peace Walker, and MGS5's story picks up right after Peace Walker. The other games all happen after MGSV chronologically so they're not as important. (Timeline is, MGS3 < (Portable Ops, debatably) < MGS:PW < Ground Zeroes < The Phantom Pain < Metal Gear 1 < MG2 < Metal Gear Solid 1 < MGS2 < MGS4)

I honestly feel like MGSV is going to be one of the worst games to play as an introduction to the series, just because of where it fits into the timeline. I'd recommend playing through MGS3, Peace Walker and Ground Zeroes, or at minimum sitting through a video of their main story; YouTube's got videos where people string together all of the main story cutscenes in each game.

@mruno1: honeslty even the people who played all the MGS series are bit lost here n there on story. i suggest you buy the game and play it and if you need any reference for story just go to yongyear channel on youtube and you'll get everything you need to knw.

Okay cool. I may subscribe to PS Now to play the old games. I've heard some people saying that the stories pretty ridiculous/convoluted and others saying it's ridiculous/amazing, so I think I might play the Metal Gear games they have on there.

You could probably get away with just reading a description of Snake Eater, Portable Ops, and Peace Walker if you don't feel like playing any of the previous games, This game does seem like it's going to be playable without knowing the story, but if you're like me and need to know everything that's happening in the story, I would replay them or read up on them, because there are definitely going to be some characters like Zero and possibly The Boss who you just won't recognize. The story is pretty complex overall, but that's part of what I love about it

Youre gonna be lost a lot imagine this people that played all except peace walker or that havent completed peace walker at 100% are lost, metal gear is one of those games that doesnt care if you dont play any of them, i suggest you buy the collection of mgs before this and play them in order, however if you only want to know about the story of the main character you can play 3 and peace walker, another option is walkthroughs or wikias but kojima put a lot of easter eggs in his games so it will be difficult to catch up, if you have the patience this is one of the best stories among any sagas in video games

I was about to ask that, i played MGS4 trying to reach out and understand the story reading many things.

So... i got a simple question *Spoilers¨*

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In MGS4, Solid Snake (the son and clon of BigBoss) at the ending of the game he talked to the Big Boss of PeaceWalker/GZeroes/Phantom Pain at a cementery and Big Boss Actually died in his arms?