Metal Gear Solid 5 News: Carry Over Data, Second Screen Support, and More

Hideo Kojima’s upcoming stealth-action title Metal Gear solid 5 has more new details for fans to follow up on with information pointing toward the possibility of carrying over data from Ground Zeroes to The Phantom Pain, alongside an expected (going by the current trend) second screen support for the game.

Kojima himself was recently interviewed by Famitsu, where he took the opportunity to remind everyone again that Ground Zeroes is a separate game and will serve as a prologue to The Phantom Pain. Apparently, he used the word “tutorial” to describe Ground Zeroes so that no confusion is further created.

“Ground Zeroes is the prologue to Phantom Pain, and it is intended to be similar to the pre-title sequence of a Hollywood movie, where something major happens to catch the audience's attention, before the real story starts,” as translated via NeoGAF.

However, while reminding about the story setting for both the games, it was also revealed that there will be no dynamic weather or the normal day/night progression cycle in Ground Zeroes, and that the main story missions will be limited to nighttime when it’s raining.

Nonetheless, fans will still be able to experience other times of the day thanks to the side missions in the game.

Heading over to the content available in The Phantom Pain, Kojima stated that the game will feature a full range of expanded features that have been carried over from the previously released Peace Walker such as base building, recruiting soldiers, and more, although most of these won’t be available in Ground Zeroes.

It was also revealed that the save data in Ground Zeroes will carry over to The Phantom Pain, with added benefits in the full game for all those who decide to do extra stuff in Ground Zeroes.

Previously, when it was revealed that Ground Zeroes is a prologue to The Phantom Pain, a lot of questions were raised as to why the company decided to go for two separate titles rather than having them in one box.

Keeping those queries in mind, Kojima revealed that Ground Zeroes is being released as a separate package in the first place because the main game is currently taking a long time to develop since its coming with a large amount of content.

And that is why “the marketing team at Konami worked out this release format with Kojima so gamers can at least experience the prologue segment of the game earlier,” the translated report says.

But, as Kojima revealed, anyone who buys both Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain will be eligible later to some unknown content in the full game as bonus, although the details of which are yet to be revealed.

Lastly, the game is also set to support a second screen functionality via smartphones or tablets, with the second screen expected to display things like leaderboards.

“There have also been feedback from people outside of Japan for a map display and so on, but Kojima has some concerns about players diverting their attention between two screens, so he's still looking into it,” the report added.

Metal Gear Solid 5 is currently scheduled for release on Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3, although no official release date has been announced.