>>12010570
MGS3 basically shifted its gameplay design in an entirely new direction. Before that levels were tight and small, even in bigger areas like Heliport, the placement of the guards is still setup in a way where you're always near something to hide, something you can quickly go behind, or just run straight past the guard. This makes the stealth of 1 and 2 pretty snappy, you're generally not staying still all that often.
3 changed this to more open areas, and suddenly the most optimal way of playing became crawling, it became circling around guards as opposed to close quarters stealth. This type of design is one that only got better and better with each entry after 3, 4 did it better while still sort of having that same central issue of crawling being too optimal. 5 was kind of the first game where they finally perfected this big scale stealth. This puts 1 and 2 in their own category, because none of the games after that have done their stealth better, because it just dropped that style of gameplay. Whereas 3 just feels way more awkward to play than 4 or 5 does.
