Hideo Kojima took to Twitter last December 28 to elaborate on the differences on the upcoming Metal Gear Solid games, The Phantom Pain and Ground Zeroes.
As has been explained before, Ground Zeroes serves as Metal Gear Solid 5’s prologue. At the same time, it is intended to be a tutorial for the new Metal Gear Solid. In essence, that makes Ground Zeroes a sneaking simulator. Implicit in Kojima’s explanation is that Ground Zeroes will be a considerably smaller project compared to the Phantom Pain, with a smaller, more straightforward, mission.
Kojima then points out that Ground Zeroes has a smaller field in its scenario compared to Phantom Pain, which will be bigger by the hundreds. Phantom Pain will be so big that missions will be set in different time zones, although technically there will be no time change.
One small note remains somewhat obscure; he appends to his last tweet that each mission will come ‘w/ different play.’ Does he simply refer here to the fact that you are playing in a different time zone, or that missions will expand on Metal Gear Solid gameplay and give you different things to do?
To a certain extend, Kojima’s half translated tweets serve to help hype up the upcoming games. We are never fully sure of what he means, and he has been judicious in drip feeding very general information. All will eventually be revealed for us to discover on our own, as Ground Zeroes has been given an official release date of March 18 for Playstation 3, Xbox 360, Playstation 4 and Xbox One.