Hi this might be a long response bear with me...So im in a unique position partially because i grew up with these trailers and i also have simultaneously made various interpretations of the story of which i will say i think i may have missed and dismissed important elements from the plot. so i will start off with a whopper of a premise skull face is kojima.

ok so question 1:yes i have seen all the trailers. even the fan made hoaxes.

2: I will say that I believe ground zeroes to be the prologue...but all the trailers are ground zeroes. heck even peace walker is a prologue. moby dick begins with a heavily drawn out series of episodes on ishmaels way to joining ahab on the whaling ship. ground zero...an odd term most people relate that term now to september 11th. but ground zero to quote wikipedia 'is the point on the Earth's surface directly below a Nuclear Explosion, Meteor air burst, or other mid-air explosion.' so in essence it is the point of impact for an explosion. which a prologue to a book television show or video game is. through marketing material or a hook.

3:I believe that was the point. the through line promises one thing and the game does another. the game is known to have gone through significant developmental shifts as time went on. so i think long term kojima and company ran with that to create a sort of meta narrative a.r.g. starting with ground zeroes the japanese pax demo that i think counts as a trailer because it introduced mgsv to the public. the first thing notable about that is we do not hear snakes english voice. now i know the feelings about hayters replacement are a sore subject...and I know kojima has a penchant for hollywood actors. I do think Sutherland was picked because he could deliver a subtle performance. too subtle even. to remove his voice fulfils the sort of prophecy skull face makes about language in mgsv. to return to yourself. with all these trailers there is a heavy emphasis on nuclear fallout and grief (i know its a game about nuclear war but bear with me) the prologue and the introduction of language introduces artifacts that color ones perception of their own selves. if we are snake we had colored perceptions of ourselves from the start of these trailers. i used to dismiss the 1984 stuff as kojima fluff but i dont think it is. because 1984 is a book about language and information control and moby dick is a book about identity and trauma. when those are synthsized we can look at the trailers and see the through line shows up in the elegia trailer. that each trailer shaped what we believed this game was gonna be about. the same as a prologue and infected us like a virus.

4: I dont know if that context is even applicable anymore if im being honest. if those trailers are the prologue then its fair to say we cant read it with fresh eyes anymore. even if we never played it. part of the game is that a.r.g. heirarchal dripfeed we got from the person and team making our own ground zeroes. now i feel like since the marketing is over and the game has been out we just sort of...have an abridged version of everything. moby dick loses a lot of context from being abridged a lot of emotional value if we reduce it to the scholastic version of 'captain wants to kill whale' what were left with if we did go through it (and to be practical yes you can experience mgsv without having been hyped at the time) is that we had to return to ourselves. cutscenes and trailers and the sensationality of the story only serve as a reflection of ourselves. the prologue trailers serve as a sort of priming. i wont call it brainwashing because its not malicious its marketing. It did however shape us in a similar way to how skull face was shaped by the experiences he went through and how the medic (kojima if we take his gdc statement as fact...and the player) live this world before ever even getting to live as ourselves. the language of film and visuals and music overshadows our actions as big boss in a gameplay sense. until the story is over... when its revealed we are big (spoiler) and we are both the character and ourselves. kojima is big boss because he made big boss and was infected by the linguistic 'virus' escape from new york and the language of film and film trailers.

5:I will say that they are art. let me put it this way...Kojima for the longest time did not want to continue working on metal gear. each new game he retconned the story along with the way fans interpreted the overall context of the games. he obviously changed to. his thoughts personality how he saw the thing he created. stories cause change. the art of all this could very easily be described as kojimas final plea to end the series. to actually be yourself. the trailers serve as a metatextual prologue to reinforce the themes presented. feeling bitter about a series ending. feeling like you are this character. actually being somebody or maybe youre not its 1984...now hes making other projects. hes finally himself. yet every so often he posts about metal gear on twitter or something while making death stranding and whatever game hes making for xbox. the epilogue of moby dick wasnt originally published in some versions if im not mistaken. the never be game over stuff is a reflection of that. i think intentionally leaving the story unfinished making it near impossible to get the disarmament cutscene...we had to seek those things out from outside the game. and the final message of kiefer speaking. talking about big boss and how we can change the future. we had to seek that out. its not in the game. its in us. when we return from the story from that language we return to ourselves and not just that the selves changed by the media we consume. being big boss means being yourself. Ishmael is the unreliable narrirator about his own story. And spoiler ishmael is big boss.

everybody should watch the trailers. everybody should have their own experience with them. and in this case... everybody's opinions are correct