The title of the latest Metal Gear Solid happens to be “Ground Zeroes.” That’s zeroes—in plural. The title was originally assumed—incorrectly—to be a misspelling or a mistranslation of Zero.
Series creator and videogame luminary Hideo Kojima took to Twitter today to set the record straight and correct these assumptions.
“The title name is ‘MGS Ground Zeroes’, not ‘Zero’,” he wrote. “It is plural. There's not only one hypocenter.”
Unlike the title of the other MGS game in development, Revengeance, which is simply a portmanteau of the words “vengeance” and “revenge”, Ground Zeroes is intended to imply that there is more than one impact site for whatever Kojima and his team have planned for the game. It certainly ties into the proxy war concept in Metal Gear Solid 4.
Kojima-san added in a separate tweet that Project Ogre and Ground Zeroes are completely separate projects. No doubt tired from his travels, he expressed his exasperation with being asked the question repeatedly while attending PAX in Seattle.
“I'm sick & tired of people keep asking me like ‘is that project Ogre?’ here in Seattle everyday,” wrote Kojima-san. “Project Ogre is what the project that Ogre appears. Ogre does not appear in ‘MGS Ground Zeroes’ trailer.”