Assassin's Creed is, put kindly, a contentious series. Put unkindly, its has had highs and lows so high and so low that I'm starting to feel seasick thinking about it. But for all its troubles, swathes of players keep coming back, because there's something at the heart of Assassin's Creed that still creates fun, enthralling, even timeless adventures.

Of course, no one can actually agree on which Creed games deserve that ‘timeless’ descriptor. If you're a newcomer to the series looking for what's worth your time, internet screaming matches aren't going to do you much good; you need a list of the best and worst of the Assassin's Creed series, free of drama. For you, I have combed through the data, consulted those most knowledgeable, and reached back into my own past to create a ranked list of all currently available Assassin's Creed games. This doesn't include AC games that have been scrubbed from existence, like the ill-fated Assassin's Creed Recollection, but everything else is here. Nothing is true, but everything is permitted, so permit me to say this list might spark debate.

This one was a tough call, because Freedom Cry was born as Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag DLC, but had bigger ambitions and eventually became a . While its combat and sidequest structure make it all but inseparable from Black Flag, it deserves an honorable mention for its story alone. Here, former slave Adewale stands against the slavemasters of Haiti in the name of freedom, proving that the Assassins' mission can take on many important shapes.

Freedom Cry puts you in the thick of a slave trade and is unflinching in how it depicts that brutality. You can't miss the human auctions or runaway slaves who will be killed without your help, and being a participant rather than an observer makes it impossible to ignore. But perhaps most importantly, Freedom Cry shows how those slaves and the nation's freemen are active participants in their own liberation, working with Adewale rather than waiting passively. In that regard, Freedom Cry does something that is not only important, but almost entirely unique, and that deserves a shout out.

Before Ezio's trilogy was a twinkle in the eyes of the AC development team, there was Altair's Chronicles. The mobile prequel to the original Assassin's Creed, it sees Altair hunting for a mythical artifact called The Chalice in constricted 3D world. It's a disaster from start to finish: Assassin's Creed's combat is simplified down to the point that it's no longer interesting, locations and missions are same-y, its story (complete with forced romance) is hackneyed, and the dialogue is consistently awful with occasional forays into Vader ‘Noooooooo!’ territory.

The one thing Altair's Chronicles sort-of has going for it is visuals, including lovely (if overused) environmental designs, which at least make it aesthetically-pleasing. But that's not nearly enough to make up for its many and varied shortcomings, and with new mobile AC games surpassing its visual quality, it’s best to give this one a pass.

This actually covers five separate titles published over the years, but they're basically the same game, so it's efficient to talk about them all at once. Up until the release of AC4: Black Flag, every main entry in the series was accompanied by a mobile game that retells its story. Or, rather, takes that story and shaves it down to the absolute basics, using what remains as the skeleton for a simple side-scroller build for playing at the train station.

These games are workmanlike and handle well enough, but much of what makes the main games interesting is tossed out in the name of mobile consistency. Ultimately these titles feel like random side-scrollers with AC skins, and Ubisoft apparently thought so too: every sign of them has been scrubbed from the company's digital storefronts, so you'll have to hit the if (for some reason) you want to give them a try.

Assassin’s Creed Identity launched on iOS with the intent to be more like the full-blooded console releases, albeit with an RPG spin. Set in the Italian Renaissance, Identity attempts to recreate the series’ signature sneaking-and-stabbing gameplay, shrunken down for shorter sessions. Ezio’s been swept aside for custom-created characters, each brought to life using a marvelous Italian name generator.

Sadly, you’ll probably spend more time messing around with that than you will the actual game. It’s a free-to-play affair, sending you to and fro to eliminate some guy / collect this artifact / escort this person in exchange for skill points you can spend on outfits, equipment, and movesets. Spotty controls result in a lot of running into walls rather than up them, but at least you won’t have to avoid the usual swarm of civilians - there’s barely anyone in the streets, meaning that it’s up to the flat textures and boxy buildings to build the atmosphere. Bizarrely, Identity was only released in Australia and New Zealand on iOS; a promised Android version never arrived. Frankly, world, you’re not missing out.

If you only played the Assassin's Creed mobile games, you might get the idea that the series' trademark is side-scrolling your way through corridors of oblivious guards/corpses-to-be. Assassin's Creed 2: Discovery won’t do much to dispel that notion; you play as Ezio, conducting assassination missions for a series of clients, all of which are nondescript and ultimately unimportant. They just act as vehicles to push you into a 2D platformer that takes on a few infinite-runner qualities, if you feel like charging in full steam and destroying every barely competent guard you meet.

It's a simple game that doesn't have the depth of most Assassin's Creed titles, but it does accomplish what it sets out to do. Creating a smoother, teresting platforming experience than the mobile companion games, Discovery set the standard for 2D Creed games back in 2009. It's since been bypassed by the superior Chronicles: China, but might still be worth a play if you can find a DS copy, since Ubisoft has since removed all evidence of the mobile version.

Released alongside Assassin's Creed 2 and Discovery in a calculated assault on everyone's wallets, Bloodlines continues Altair's story following the events of the original game. As opposed to previous handheld/mobile entries in the series, Bloodlines tries to approximate the 3D look and free-for-all gameplay of the console releases. In the case of the former, it does a decent job, with crisp visuals that make it look like a true AC game. But when it comes to gameplay, Bloodlines misses the haystack: small environments funnel you into battles constantly, but the combat system doesn't actually use the PSP's controls to its benefit, so fights often feel as ungainly as hand-stitching in oven mitts.

Plus, while Bloodlines does have an involved story that's not as awful as Altair's Chronicles, it often falls flat and isn't strong enough to make up for the lackluster combat. Its one saving grace is Maria - Altair's sharp-tongued associate who fans might remember from a certain - whose interactions with Altair give the story some life and depth. Sadly, even she's not enough to save the production.

It takes serious confidence to slim down a mini-game from one of your previous titles and release it on its own. But Ubisoft was riding high on the crest of Black Flag's success in late 2013, and the result was Assassin's Creed Pirates, a mobile game that is just Black Flag's ship combat, playable on the go.

Pirates does try to be a proper Assassin's Creed game, with a story involving Assassins, Templars and magic DNA time machines, but that's just window dressing - you spend 99% of your time shooting cannonballs at other ships just 'cause. But the designers knew that, and so they made a point of prioritizing the combat and making sure that controlling ships via touch features feel simple and natural. Pirates sits low on this list because it’s just a facet of another Assassin's Creed game, but that facet is so well designed that it deserves recognition.

Assassin's Creed 3 is, in many ways, a test drive. It was the first Ezio-less Assassin's Creed in five years, the first set in a populated wilderness (fields in Italy don’t count), and the first to feature the series' now beloved ship combat. It does a lot of things right, creating a Frontier you can explore for hours, and it’s . Unfortunately, it gets a lot of other things - fundamental, obvious things - very wrong.

Main character Connor is often too aloof and superior to be sympathetic, and the amount of times he steps in to save the incompetent Founding Fathers is hard to take seriously. The game contains sections that emphasize stealth, but the actual stealth controls are poor, so these parts are far more annoying than fun. And, hurting from a tight development schedule, the game shipped with enough bugs to make an entomologist swoon; now the way it controls is awkward at best and game-breaking at worst. It has some good ideas, but ultimately can't execute on them; that's been left to later games that have the fundamentals down better.

AC Liberation still bears the marks of its time on the Vita. Its combat is just as fluid and satisfying as some of the strongest Assassin's Creed games, and presenting its story as the Templars' altered version of events is one of the most clever new mechanics the series has seen in a while. But there's no escaping how cramped the game feels, both in physical size and its storyline.

One-woman-wonder Aveline is a fascinating character with a lot of gusto, but her motivations are never really made clear, and neither are those of her enemies. And with only one city, some outlying swamp, and a temple to investigate, it doesn't make you want to explore the world the way an Assassin's Creed game should. All told, it fits squarely in the middle of the Creed quality scale: not great, but not terrible, and serviceable for fans in need of an AC fix.

If you got your first look at Assassin's Creed Rogue with no context, you might come away thinking it's Black Flag DLC. That isn't too far from the mark - the story of an Assassin-turned-Templar named Shay Cormac, Rogue focuses on the period of time between Black Flag and AC3, and lifts heavily from Black Flag's trove of assets. Ship combat is virtually the same, music and sound effects are extremely similar, and Shay fights the same way Edward does nearly stab for stab.

But with Black Flag's style of combat and exploration on the way out with the release of Unity, some fans hail Rogue as a welcome retread, and it does a standout job of replicating Black Flag's best parts. Plus, new environments like the North Pole, and minor additions to ship combat, give those mechanics a little extra juice without changing them too much, and seeing off some of the North American arc's most beloved characters is welcome fan-service. It doesn't do much new or inventive, but Rogue extends the life of a familiar and well-loved time-period, giving fans a soft place to land.

The game that started it all isn't looking as hot as it was eight years ago, but it isn't quite falling apart at the seams yet either. Effectively a tech demo for what the franchise could become, the original Assassin's Creed gives you one thing to do (assassinate, if you hadn't guessed) and tells you to do it ten times over, with only the most repetitive of sidequests to break things up. Much of what earned it acclaim at the time of its release has also faded, as graphics have gotten better and Ubisoft honed the controls for AC games so you don't run up walls quite as much.

But what the original Assassin's Creed has going for it is a place close to the series' heart: you learn everything you can about your target, you plot the assassination, and you execute. The high-profile missions offer some variety in that regard, since each target behaves in a unique way that favors a different kind of approach. It's bare-bones, and it's been done better since, but the game isn't irrelevant yet.

The latest in that fine tradition of Assassin's Creed side-scrollers, Chronicles: China perfects their best parts and improves on them by borrowing tricks from one of (hint: it's the one with the ninjas). Stealth mechanics are integrated seamlessly and give the gameplay a lot more flavor, and true free-running segments create intense and welcome action. Add in a beautiful art style that disguises its lesser budget, and Chronicles: China is easily the best among Assassin's Creed's not-quite-2D library.

On the downside, its short runtime and basic setup don't allow for the exploration of a truly great Assassin's Creed, and the lack of variety between environments means that the world quickly becomes repetitive. Plus, protagonist Shao Jun's revenge plot is light on heartfelt storytelling, and instead unapologetically replicates that of her mentor, Ezio Auditore. But it's a fun and challenging title that advances the quality of the series' smaller offerings and redeems the format.

Let's get this out in the open: Assassin's Creed Unity has problems. An ambitious project that promised to revamp Assassin's Creed's standard battle mechanics, create a bigger world than in any previous title, and build a completely new multiplayer from scratch, it bit off more cake than it could chew and was an . And while that may be the story that lives on into gaming infamy, it's not Unity's full story: it has a lot of good stuff under its lapel that isn't always buried by glitches.

In addition to being beautiful and upping the graphical standard for every Creed to come, Unity's assassination system is revolutionary, opening up new opportunities for creative killing by honing in on weak links in the environment's security. In addition, it offers up cerebral challenges in the form of murder mysteries and riddle solving, which are a lot tricate and interesting than AC has seen in the past. If all Unity ever brings to the series is the ability to and some serious brain teasers, its earned a place of esteem on this list.

Pick a popular game, and chances are good that the protagonist is somewhere between 15 and 35 years old. They might as well be dead after that, because you're more likely to run across a unicorn in-game than a silver-haired main character. Ezio Auditore is not only an exception to that rule, but the best, thanks to the brilliant story at the forefront of Assassin's Creed Revelations. Featuring easily one of the most thoughtful and mature tales the series has yet woven, Revelations set the standard for every Assassin's Creed story since.

Admittedly, that brilliance isn't felt in every part of the game. Constantinople is fairly drab and forgettable, and the tower-defense mini-game added to territory-claiming is basically the worst. But that only speaks to the strength of Revelations' narrative, which focuses on sacrifice and loss in a painfully honest way that satisfies your heart as much as it breaks it. Both Ezio and Altair get the loving send-offs they deserve, because Revelations knows that there's strength in telling a different kind of story.

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. A direct, swiftly-produced sequel to Assassin's Creed 2 that restricts your movements to one city and deemphasizes story: it had shameless cash-in written all over it, especially given the precedence set by Altair's Chronicles and Bloodlines. But those of us who prepared for disappointment were met with a pleasant surprise: Brotherhood is good. So good that it changed the face of the series forever by implementing brand new mechanics that are still around to this day, like capturing territory, addictive multiplayer, and control over a legion of Assassins you can summon at your whim.

The only real downside to Brotherhood, as mentioned, is the lack of story and different locations to visit. But alongside those pieces of gameplay it executes so well, Brotherhood hides emotional slices of plot for the curious to find, and Rome itself is so diverse that you're never left wanting for much more.

Altair may have technically kicked off the Assassin's Creed franchise, but turning it into a gaming powerhouse that sells millions of copies to fans around the world? That was all Ezio, and for good reason. Starting from the very basic formula that started the series, Assassin's Creed 2 squeezed blood from a stone to create a nearly perfect game.

Its tale of revenge is engaging from the instant it begins, and full of characters you love and ache to see succeed. Assassinations are made much more complex and challenging through unique weapons and a new move-set that gets deeper the longer you test it out. It fills out the time between main missions with sidequests that are instantly engaging, and the best of them may . Nothing is overlooked, and nothing is wasted: AC2 is an expertly crafted and perfectly honed masterpiece, one that made Assassin's Creed what it is today. And for the longest time, nothing could surpass it.

While AC2 soared to success on an updraft of enthusiasm for a burgeoning series, Black Flag arrived on the heels of the disappointing AC3, when confidence in the series was at an all-time low. It faced a hostile climate with little faith that a game about pirate Assassins could possibly succeed. And in proper buccaneer fashion, it blew the doors right off the place, taking every piece of the Assassin's Creed franchise and turning it into pirate gold.

There's almost nothing about the Assassin's Creed series that Black Flag didn't either invent or radically improve; against all expectations, it offered up the biggest game world the franchise had yet seen, an incredible variety of addictive missions, ship combat that was suddenly fun, and an effortlessly beautiful soundtrack that you've probably listened to at least once while nowhere near the game. But Black Flag went beyond the video game basics, giving an honest treatment of an often misrepresented historical period, and deftly telling the tale of a time, a place, and a people that ultimately came to ruin. It's masterfully crafted, incredibly fun, and is the game that proves the series' best years aren't behind it.

It's no secret that the Metal Gear Solid timeline is a complicated quagmire of names, dates, and secret organizations, and with the last entry in the long-running series arriving in less than two weeks, we'll finally get the missing pieces to a story that has been decades in the making. Metal Gear has always revelled in gleeful impenetrability, straddling the line between serious melodrama and over-the-top ridiculousness. It's endearing in a way, as following Metal Gear's labyrinthine narrative is usually worth the effort needed to understand it, but if you're new to the series, or not willing to sift through pages of wiki articles, keeping track of its myriad characters can be a nightmare.

Metal Gear's characters are perhaps the most fluid of any video game franchise out there, as their allegiances (and even names) can change drastically from entry to entry. That's why I've compiled a list of the major players in Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain, their role in the overall franchise, as well as any other information we might possibly know about them. If you're wondering why Revolver Ocelot is working for Big Boss, or why young Eli seems to be so important, this article will give you a crash course in who's who in The Phantom Pain.

A quick note: This article assumes basic knowledge of the overall plot to the Metal Gear Solid franchise. I try to summarize where I can, but if you're completely new or want a refresher, be sure to check out .

Big Boss began his role in the Metal Gear series as its greatest villain, but thanks to decades of sequels, prequels, and retroactive continuity, his role in the timeline has become far more complex. Metal Gear Solid 3 introduces a Big Boss before he received his intimidating title, back when he was known by the callsign Naked Snake. Snake receives the title of Big Boss after saving the day by killing his closest friend and mentor, but then leaves the military and wanders from skirmish to skirmish, eventually forming a secret organization called The Patriots with Major Zero and Revolver Ocelot. Things seem hunky-dory until Zero decides to clone Big Boss without his consent, which doesn't really sit well with him. Big Boss leaves the Patriots, and eventually meets Kazuhira Miller, forming the Militaires Sans Frontieres (MSF), a private military company built for a new age of war.

Which leads us to Ground Zeroes, a brief mission that shows us the destruction of MSF by unknown forces and a helicopter crash that seems to place Big Boss in a nine-year-long coma. Up to this point, Big Boss hasn't exactly gone full-on evil yet. Morally gray and willing to build a massive organization of mercenaries, sure, but he's not finding war orphans, raising them as soldiers, and using them to create more war orphans, perpetuating the cycle of violence ad infinitum like he was in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. So how does Big Boss get to that point? The Phantom Pain should shed some light on exactly how Big Boss will avenge his fallen comrades - and considering his new callsign is Punished/Venom Snake, it's probably not going to be pretty.

First revealed in , Ishmael is probably The Phantom Pain's most enigmatic character - and that's saying something when you compare him to the mysterious rogue's gallery already revealed.

Ishmael is a fellow hospital mate of Big Boss who claimed to be watching over him while he was in a coma for nine years. His face is completely bandaged, and he sounds like he's voiced by Kiefer Sutherland - which, coincidentally, is the same actor who voices Big Boss. Who is Ishmael? Is he another person, or merely a figment of our imagination? Whoever he is, he seems like he holds the key to The Phantom Pain's biggest secrets.

The first thing you'll probably notice about Quiet is her clothing - or, more accurately, her lack of clothing. The reason behind her manner of dress is apparently under as much lock and key as the reason why she's unwilling - or unable - to talk, but based on the , it would appear that your crew isn't exactly thrilled to bring her aboard.

What we do know about Quiet is that, at some point in the story, she meets up with Big Boss and joins forces, offering up her crack-shot sniping skills in the field. She'll post up on a cliff face or some form of high elevation, keeping watch for you through her sniper scope, marking enemies, and sending a bullet through their unfortunate faces at your command.

Skull Face doesn't seem like a very nice guy, if the cassette tapes found in Ground Zeroes are any indication. He holed up at Camp Omega for a while, taking time to torture both Chico and Paz, as well as a variety of other POWs and political prisoners. At the beginning of Ground Zeroes, he's seen taking off in a helicopter moments before Big Boss shows up, his face scarred beyond recognition.

Like many of the newly-revealed characters, not much is known of Skull Face, though the does shed some light on his origin. At a young age, Skull Face lost his nation, as well as the language of his native tongue, to foreign soldiers. Because of this, Skull Face wants to rid the world of language, uniting the world under "the chain of retaliation". The events of Ground Zeroes make it seem like he was the one who ordered the bomb to be placed inside Paz, causing the explosion that sent Big Boss into a coma, but then he's seen palling around with Big Boss at the end of that E3 trailer so… what the hell is going on?

This guy seems to get a new name with every single game he's in. Referred to as Master McDonnell Miller in Metal Gear Solid, then Kazuhira Miller in Peace Walker, now he's Benedict Miller. He was second-in-command of MSF during Peace Walker, and after its annihilation at the end of Ground Zeroes, he rejoins Big Boss to pick up the pieces, forming a new private military corporation called Diamond Dogs nine years later. Obsessed with revenge, Miller and Big Boss aim to take down Cipher once and for all in The Phantom Pain.

But here's the thing - eventually, Miller and Big Boss go their separate ways, as Master Miller ends up training soldiers for FOXHOUND, including one Solid Snake, while Big Boss secretly heads up Outer Heaven. Miller even serves as one of Solid Snake's contacts during Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, going so far as to call Big Boss a "monster" in the final encounter. Miller dies shortly before the events of Metal Gear Solid, as his body is found murdered in his Alaskan home during the Shadow Moses Incident. What caused the schism between the two comrades-in-arms? Or will this bit of information be retconned out of the series' timeline? Hopefully The Phantom Pain will provide some answers.

Introduced in Metal Gear Solid as a bitter rival to Solid Snake, future games in the series would paint him in a far more sympathetic light. He first met Big Boss during Operation Snake Eater, where Ocelot worked as a Russian GRU operative and secret Philosopher spy. After the events of Snake Eater, Ocelot and Big Boss would go on to form the Patriots, along with Major Zero. When Big Boss left, Ocelot remained with the Patriots, though he despised their policies. In the 1980s, he left the Patriots and rejoined Big Boss to help build the Diamond Dogs.

Despite playing villain to Solid Snake throughout his adventures, MGS4 informed us that Ocelot's loyalty always remained with Big Boss. Everything that happened in MGS 1, 2, and 4 - from siding with Liquid and Solidus Snake, to grafting his hand with Liquid's arm and allowing it to take control of his body - was all done to help Big Boss combat the Patriots. He dies at the end of MGS4, thanks to the FOXDIE virus inside Solid Snake's body.

The Emmerich family has a long history with building machines of war. Huey's father was one of the scientists that worked on the Manhattan Project, designing the atomic bombs that would decimate Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Huey would go on to work as a mechanical engineer, perfecting research discovered in Operation Snake Eater that would give way to the bipedal technology found on Metal Gear. He also designed Peace Walker in 1974, believing that it would provide the ultimate form of nuclear deterrence. His son, Hal (or Otacon, as he's also known), would go on to develop Metal Gear REX in Metal Gear Solid - but let's back up a bit.

Big Boss rescues Huey Emmerich during the events of Peace Walker and brings him into MSF to design Metal Gear ZEKE, a nuclear-equipped walking battlemech. Before the events of Ground Zeroes, government organizations are catching wind of MSF and rumors that they may be hiding nukes. Big Boss and Kazuhira Miller dismiss these allegations and deny their requests for an inspection, but Huey sends another message allowing them to go ahead with the investigation, with the team wrapping up as Big Boss returns from his rescue mission at Camp Omega. The investigation was likely a ruse, however, as Big Boss returned to find MSF under attack from an unknown force. Was Huey the reason MSF was invaded, or is he merely a patsy to a larger double-cross?

Eli's only been shown in a few trailers, and only in a brief handful of scenes, but he is most likely one of the clones created during the Les Enfants Terribles project. More specifically, he's probably Liquid Snake, the villain of Metal Gear Solid. First off, Eli is the right age to be Liquid, considering The Phantom Pain takes place in 1984, and the Les Enfants Terribles project began in the early 1970's. He's blond, he does the same fist-pump-then-hop-into-Metal-Gear bit that Liquid does in MGS, and the back of his jacket has a series of Japanese characters that loosely translate to "liquid man". Oh, and at , the camera hovers over him and another kid who looks exactly like him, while Big Boss says, "'Les Enfants Terribles', Zero called it." Yeah, the kid has to be Liquid Snake.

Anyway, according to Metal Gear Solid, Liquid Snake and his father Big Boss don't exactly have the best relationship. Liquid feels slighted because he ended up with all of the recessive genes while Solid ended up with the dominant genes, even though Liquid doesn't know that the reverse is actually true. His ultimate wish is to surpass his father and his genetic destiny, and his attempt to do this comes during the Shadow Moses Incident. He ultimately fails, falling victim to the FOXDIE virus harbored inside Solid Snake's body.

Not much is known about Code Talker, but the mentions that language is the one thing that can bring multiple cultures and nationalities together.

This is where The Phantom Pain gets a little weird. We've seen that shows a young child wearing a gas mask while floating in the air, along with the appearance of a menacing man engulfed in flames (possibly Colonel Volgin, the villain from Metal Gear Solid 3). Is the child Psycho Mantis, the master psychic introduced in Metal Gear Solid? Does that make the man on fire a psychokinetic apparition, or his he real, too? Or is something else going on here?

Paz originally called upon Big Boss at the beginning of Peace Walker to help rid her country of a mysterious invading force, but was, in actuality, a double-agent working for Cipher. Her job was to keep tabs on Big Boss, MSF, and the development of Metal Gear ZEKE. When her cover was blown, she tried to make off with ZEKE, attempting to kill Big Boss in the process. Big Boss foiled her plans, and Paz is flung into the ocean in an explosion.

Big Boss learns that Paz survived the blast and is being held prisoner at Camp Omega, a US black site on Cuban soil. Because she knows of MSF's and, subsequently, Metal Gear ZEKE's existence, Big Boss infiltrates the camp to rescue her. After exfiltrating Paz via helicopter, he discovers a bomb planted inside her abdomen, but misses a second bomb - the one that supposedly destroys the helicopter and places Big Boss into a nine-year-long coma. Paz should surely be dead, right? Well, shows a Paz who looks very much alive, and who hasn't aged a day since the incident in 1975.

Big Boss meets Chico during the Peace Walker Incident during a rescue mission. Chico's older sister, Amanda, was a comandante for the Sandinista National Liberation Front, and urges Big Boss to rescue her brother from the enemy's clutches. Big Boss finds the young boy weeping, having sold out the location of his comrades. Big Boss takes pity on him, recruiting him to fight alongside him with the rest of MSF. It's there that Chico befriends and develops a crush on Paz.

Fast forward to Ground Zeroes. Chico learns that Paz is being held at Camp Omega, and so he leaves on his own to find and rescue her, inevitably getting captured as a result. Big Boss rescues Chico along with Paz, and exfiltrates via chopper. He witnesses the destruction of MSF along with Big Boss, Paz, and Kazuhira Miller, and is inside the helicopter when the bomb hidden inside Paz goes off. Chico's fate is currently unknown.

Major Zero was a British SAS officer and MI6 operative before joining the CIA and heading up the FOX Unit, a black ops squad specializing in infiltration, along with The Boss. He was Naked Snake's commanding officer during the events of Metal Gear Solid 3, and would go on to form The Patriots after Revolver Ocelot recovered the Philosophers' Legacy.

While Major Zero and Big Boss were allies for a time, Zero's Les Enfants Terribles cloning project created a schism between the two, causing them to become bitter rivals. Zero renamed The Patriots to Cipher and went into hiding, using proxies to relay orders to his operatives. Cipher and Big Boss would spend the next several decades fighting with one another, beginning with the Peace Walker Incident in 1974. Their conflict would eventually come to a head in 2014, as Big Boss finally ends Major Zero's life, putting a stop to The Patriots and Cipher once and for all.

While there's no word on whether Major Zero will actually make an appearance in The Phantom Pain, Skull Face and Paz make several references to Cipher throughout various cassette tapes in Ground Zeroes. Major Zero may never show his face, but it's likely that Cipher's shadow will hang over the proceedings like a storm cloud, and it's there's a good chance that , describing how he's found a way to make "the Boss' vision a reality".