It's a bit of a spoiler, so don't read the next part if you want to avoid that.

The protagonist of Shadow gets turned into a horned infant at the end, and he's the ancestor of the boy in Ico.

As for the thread title, acumen, you didn't need to write out something that long. Just write "previous" instead of "prequel". Duh.

"Will you play a sequel without its previous?"

Hrmm... nope, sorry, doesn't work, and I already explained the rules, so now you're going to have to suffer the consequences. From now on, what I'll say is "If you haven't played the earlier games in a series, will you still play any of the postceeding games"

I've always thought that any game should be able to stand on its own without playing previous iterations, otherwise the series is doomed to stagnation since it limits itself to its own fanbase. Let's see though, played MGS4 without 1 or 2, ToS 2 without 1, and that's really all I can think of that matter. There are other games where I have played later iterations in the series without playing the first, but none of those are connected by story (Persona 3 without 1 and 2, Wildarms 3 before 1) so I don't really count them.

Yes. I've only played MGS IV for example.

Sequels should be played afterwards.

Played RE4, FE:PoR and some others without playing the prequels. Should never need to. Certainly havn't missed them so far. But I would love to play RE, RE0 and previous FE now...

Let me correct my reply. Replace "its prequel" with "the previous game (or games)".