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MG2: Big Boss kidnaps a scientist that has solved the world's oil crisis, trying to use him as leverage to strengthen his new nation of soldiers in Zanzibar Land. Solid Snake is again sent by the Patriots to defeat him and does so.
MGS1: Solid Snake is sent by the Patriots (via Campbell) to kill Liquid. What is Liquid's crime? Well, he hijacked a base and captured a nuke. But why did he do that? We find out at the end of the game that he just wanted to ransom the nuke for Big Boss's body, so he could use Big Boss's genetics to prevent genetically-influenced diseases and such from killing him and the other genome soldiers. Solid Snake still kills Liquid.
MGS2:
Tanker episode: Solid Snake is sent by a tip from Ocelot (who is working for the Patriots, pretending to be Liquid) to the tanker. The tanker blows up and Solid Snake is framed, just as the Patriots planned. This allows everything to go according to plan (Metal Gear Ray is stolen, Big Shell / Arsenal Gear is erected) without the real culprits being found.
Big Shell: Solid Snake helps Raiden, not knowing that he is simply helping the S3 simulation that is training Raiden to become a soldier like Solid Snake. The simulation is also helping the Patriots learn how to control human behavior. At the end of MGS2, Raiden kills Solidus, who has already revealed that he is trying to defeat the Patriots himself.
MGS3: Solid Snake isn't born yet. But we discover that Big Boss isn't some evil inhumane person like Solid Snake has been led to believe.
MGS4: Solid Snake hunts Ocelot and destroys the Patriot AI's and such. But even at the end of the game, Ocelot (now revealed to be the good guy, fighting all along to destroy the Patriots) is killed via Snake's FoxDie, given to him by the Patriots via Drebin. Once again, Solid Snake has been used by the Patriots to kill their enemies. If Solid Snake had not taken any action in MGS4, chances are good that Ocelot would have destroyed the Patriots anyways with his giant army of PMC's.
Portable Ops and Peace Walker: Solid Snake isn't born yet.
As you can see, throughout the entire series, Solid Snake is actually the bad guy. His naivety allows him to be manipulated by the Patriots to kill all of their biggest enemies. If he had never existed in the first place, Big Boss probably would have succeeded in turning Outer Heaven into a major world power and eventually defeating the Patriots.
Even though snake himself isn't a "bad guy" he's used at pretty much every opportunity as a pawn of the Patriots.
Everything he's doing in that summary is at the behest of someone else, some superiors to whom he's beholden, and usually the effect of what his actions will be is deliberately misrepresented to him. He's not really making plot-driving decisions anywhere in that writeup, actually. Which does make sense, he's the player most of the time. Bioshock noticed that pattern and made hay with pointing it out to us, now it's kind of hard to unsee haha.
He's still directly involved, and generally ignorance of the effects of one's actions doesn't excuse culpability--though there are extents to which it does. If you empty your fishtank on the front step in winter and a pregnant lady leaving your building slips and falls on the ice, yeah, you probably should've used your frontbrain more... but this is more like if you filed your taxes, then found out months later the address you'd been given was from a spoofed IRS website, and actually you mailed all your sensitive personal info to Congolese scammers who turn around and use that money to fund vicious warlords. Like... your big sin was being fooled by an ostensibly trustworthy entity of authority. The point is, if you can't trust your own systems of authority, who can you? I think that's more the takeaway here than just, "Snake's really the bad guy." This one just doesn't feel like a case of Braid to me. More like a case of The Truman Show... or Wag the Dog.
The point, or rather one point being made in the series, is that, as a soldier, even one for his "own" nation, he can do atrocious things while still believing he's saving the world. Frankly, the unusual part is that he sees the other side of it, like, ever haha.
So yeah, I'm not even out to change your mind, but I actually would've initially agreed with you and in the process of making your case you changed my mind instead haha. Whoops.
"I'm no hero. Never was. Never will be. I'm just a hired gun doing all the wetwork." Quote from MGS4.
Solid Snake on the other hand, continues to heavily disarm pmcs and other organizations by destroying Metal Gears throughout his life. So much so that he gets branded as a terrorist by the Patriots. Snake wanted nothing but to fight for peace and to let the world be, which is what the boss wanted in mgs3 and Big Boss himself confirms Solid Snake actually accomplished what she wanted. That's the irony of the series.
Thus adding context to why Solid Snake is the hero of Metal Gear. The prequels do nothing but give us more evidence of this.
Even Naked, Venom, Liquid or Solidus Snake were also puppets.
I can’t personally say either is completely bad or good as both men have done some questionable things throughout the franchise you will find this with other characters such as Oceleot who is a pawn as well I don’t think In war you can say this specific individual actions make them a good or bad person as many things have to go into account especially the different perspectives one sees a character in Campbell is no better constantly lying and going behind snakes back making what he says questionable even before mgs 2 Campbell lies to snake and he is framed as “The good guy who helps snake during his missions” which is questionable as it’s more like he monitors snake than helps making sure things go as planned same thing happens in mgs 2 this time it’s a ai version but still has that same mentality of monitoring not helping.
MAJOR METAL GEAR PLOT SPOILERS FOR THE WHOLE SERIES AHEAD
First off, I'm pretty sure Big Boss was trying to launch the world into a state of never ending war and he also built a weapon that was designed to launch nukes in a world where complete disarmament had occurred. Big Boss was also intentionally trying to kill Solid during MG1 if I remember correctly.
In MG2SS, essentially doing Outer Heaven again, whilst there were differences in the setup, it was the same goal with Zanzibarland.
In MGS, as you said Liquid wanted the body of Big Boss to prevent the genome soldiers from dying. However, he still was trying to fulfil Big Boss's plan to create a world of perpetual war so that soldiers would be in permanent demand. Whilst Solid was used by the Patriots, it was to prevent what would have been a full on nuclear war, as there where negotiations between the US and Russia around nuclear disarmament (if I remember correctly) and if the world found out that the US was building a weapon that could launch anywhere at anytime, with no means to detect the source, you could easily see the world getting quite angry about that. We do find out that Liquid didn't actually have launch capability until Solid activated the key cards, but it was Liquid who tricked Solid into doing so. Sure the Patriots used Solid, but they probably weren't expecting him to live, or to destroy their walking missile silo.
For MGS2, the Tanker incident was done to frame Solid, but they didn't know Solid faked his own death. The whole Big Shell incident was Raiden being manipulated to stop Sollidus, who was had the right intentions, but as we learn in MGS4 cutting off Patriot control would have crippled society. Solid spent the game trying to prevent Solidus from taking the next step after freeing New York, which was once again trying to fulfil Big Boss's dream of a world of never ending war and stop the Patriots from gaining complete control over the internet via GD aboard Arsenal Gear by destroying it before it is completed (which would mean it wasn't yet connected to the essential services of society yet).
In MGS3, we see Big Boss be manipulated by the government to kill his mentor, but that was done to prevent WW3, due to Volgin launching an American davy crocket at a KGB research facility. I won't go into too much depth, but it is understandable that Big Boss would be mad at the US government for the events, but if the only way to prevent WW3 was to kill the Boss to prove to the Soviet government that the US didn't just nuke the country, then it was the right thing to do. Big Boss believes that the Boss wanted a world where soldiers are always needed, so he works towards that in PO, PW, GZ and V. This was a misinterpretation, just like how Zero misinterpreted the Boss's will and ended up creating the Patriots.
In MGS4, Solid is manipulated by the Patriots to kill Liquid Ocelot, who was using hypnotherapy to trick the world into thinking that Ocelot really was possessed by Liquid. The Patriot AIs wanted to prevent Liquid Ocelot from taking over the system, so they send out Solid, however Solid also was trying to stop the war economy perpetuated by the Patriots and bring about world peace basically. Despite Liquid Ocelot wanting to stop the Patriots, he was also going to take over the System by destroying JD, which would have gave him control over basically every weapon on the planet. And yep, he was trying to finish Big Boss's dream, confirmed by when he was talking about how Outer Heaven, Zanzibarland. Shadow Moses and Big Shell where all just trails for Outer Haven.
However, he let Solid shut down the system, although I can't quite remember why, other than him saying "this is just as I hoped". So take his plans recount from me with a grain of salt.
Either way, Solid effectively caused world peace and freed everyone form Patriot control, even though he was already at his limits from the start of the game.
I don't see how Solid was the bad guy here. Hell, even Big Boss at the end of MGS4 thought that Solid was the better man and wouldn't have made the same mistakes as he did.
But who am I kidding, this is an internet argument and we will go in circles, repeating the same points over and over. Even if we bring the argument back to square one, one becomes two, two becomes ten and ten becomes one hundred. Taking it back to one solves nothing.
As long as this discussion remains, one will become one hundred.
That is why I am taking it upon myself to bring the steam forum's cycle back to nothing in this post. I won't argue with you after this post, as it is pointless but the least we can do is respectfully disagree if this post doesn't convince you.
I salute you and everyone else who maybe hasn't played through all of the games multiple times for trying to make sense of this series' convoluted and confusing plot line.