I think you have to listen to the cassette tapes to get the most information on the story.

Chapter 1 is heavily engaged in story, you will have a few side ops that will be marked in yellow that show they're important and connect to the main story. Also the main side ops: Extract The Wondering Mother Base Soldiers tie into helping Paz restore her memory if you've met her yet. I stumbled upon her by accident while exploring the Medical Platform after it was finished. Each time you extract those wondering soldiers, go back to Paz, they have old photos of the old Mother Base that will help Paz. So don't go overlooking those side ops as just things to do to kill some time. Hell other side ops suddenly helped to get things going faster for expanding Mother Base. You'll learn more about the psycho mantis wannabe [i]( I'm pretty sure it's not pyscho mantis imo ) [/i]and the Man On Fire later on, like wow when I got to that point, it was soo cool. Kojima knows how to please his audience. As for Skull Face, you'll know why there's not much info about him. I'm not as confused about the story because listening to all those cassette tapes fills in massive amounts of story. I suggest exploring Mother Base on your downtime while listening to them, that's what I do. That and the game itself is filling in all the missing pieces of the overall MGS story if you've followed closely to it. Your still early in the game if your just starting Africa, I won't spoil how much is left in Chapter 1, enjoy it, it gets very tense and difficult later on so I suggest making sure you have your Battle Dress developed and at least Tier II Rocket Launchers if you've been rapidly expanding Mother Base. Trust me, it'll make some of the missions later on much easier, but then again it's upto you how you want to do them. But make sure your recruiting as many soldiers as you can, your going to need them and soon. All I will tell you is that the game will force you to develop an FOB for the online mode, make sure you have plenty of soldiers to spare to defend it cause players will be attacking you alot, I've lost alot of soldiers already and it's getting annoying. Better to be prepared for it now than later. Alot of us knew the FOB system would cause some problems, so recruit as many soldiers as possible. I personally didn't want to construct an FOB, but I had to if I wanted to continue with the game. Remember to listen to those tapes, they hold tons of information about everything not seen in cutscenes or missions.

Do some research on venom snake & liquid snake after you complete act 1, you'll understand more then. Also, listen to the recordings you get as it fills in a lot of plot,

Konami made Kojima abandon the cutscenes to try and draw in more purchases. The problem with that is that as a fan since Metal Gear on NES I loved the cutscenes and now with The Phantom Pain I hate listening to cassette tapes in the place of them. Also, I'm sure David Hayter would have asked for 1/2 the cash they had to have paid Sutherland and would have done 100x the lines. Seems like Big Boss is 90% mute in this game....

I had to save a prisoner that was getting transported in a jeep with a tank following, I left my horse in the road so they'd stop to honk and yell at it to move, while they stopped I creeped behind the tank, loaded it with c4, got to cover and blew it up. The guards then got out of the Jeep to inspect the tank, that's when I crawled to the jeep, jumped in and drove away with the prisoner without them ever seeing me. You get some badass war stories from this game to tell

Is it true that horse poop can literaly take out a jeep!? O_O Like it make the jeep spin.

You just spoiled three crap out of this game for me.

Best Metal Gear game since MGS3, and dare I say the best in the series thus far.

You're still in the beginning of the game, stuff will be explained later on.