Here's a brand new look at one of the missions in Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, the first part of MGSV, which will be out this spring for current- and next-gen consoles.
And if you're wondering just what Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes is, and how it's related to the upcoming Metal Gear Solid V: Phantom Pain, allow series creator Hideo Kojima to explain.
"Maybe you could think of a standard Hollywood movie where you have 15-20 minutes then the title, and then the main story starts," Kojima told Kotaku through a translator during an interview earlier this week. "So all of the events leading to [Phantom Pain] will be happening through the game. You can think of Ground Zeroes as this."
They'll be sold as two different products: Ground Zeroes will be out this spring for $30 on Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, and PS4. Phantom Pain will be out... eventually. And Kojima says Phantom Pain is "200 times" the size of the map in the mission above.
"Ground Zeroes, as far as gameplay goes, will have the player get used to all these different elements, these different actions that we will have within this open world," Kojima said. "So people can get used to it... as far as Ground Zeroes goes, there's one big mission that leads into the events of the main game, so you can see it somewhat as the tanker mission."
He's referring, of course, to the tanker mission that serves as a prologue in Metal Gear Solid 2 and leads into the game's main "plant" mission. I'd asked him how we should look at Snake's latest journey—should we envision it as the tanker/plant divide, except this time, cut into two different games?
"This main mission in Ground Zeroes is what ties strongly to the main part of Phantom Pain," Kojima said. "Within that big mission of Ground Zeroes you have several side elements, collecting specific items, doing something within a certain amount of time... In the side-ops you will find several elements scattered, and when you put them together, it will put together a story within the player's mind of what is the next part of the game."