Ground Zeroes serves as the appetizer to the main course that is the Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. As such, we always knew it's going to be the bigger game, but I don't think anyone knew how big. During an episode of the "Kojima Station" webcast, MGS creator Hideo Kojima showed up with The Phantom Pain's map, to illustrate to the fans just how big the game will be.
Metal Gear Guru Hideo Kojima Declares The Phantom Pain as 'the Game I Really Wanted to Make'
The picture above is the map in its entirety. It's hard to see since the top half is blurred out, but that's not the important part. What matters is the comparisons illustrated on the poster, in Kojima's cheeky manner.
See all those colored roads? They represent the size of the maps of all the previous games compared to The Phantom Pain. Not only is it a nice way showing how the games all led up to The Phantom Pain, which will bring the whole timeline right back to the original Metal Gear game, and supposedly the closer to the whole MGS series, but mostly it's that it shows us just how monstrous the game's open and explorable world promises to be.
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It's not just the map either. Going from past statements from Kojima, The Phantom Pain also promises to be 200 times the length of Ground Zeroes, making the game substantially impressive, even for those that were able to breeze through the demo in just two or three hours. That would give gamers about 3 1/2 weeks worth of solid content, or, approximately one cutscene from Snake Eater.
Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain is set to release sometime next year for PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One. In addition to Big Boss / Snake, other familiar faces include Ocelot, Chico, Kaz, Ground Zeroes' Skull Face, and others. The game is set to make a showing at this year's E3, but MGS guru Hideo Kojima recently gave fans a sneak peek before things kick off next week, showing a bit of Phantom Pain gameplay. Check it out below.
