To the surprise of no one, today we learned that The Phantom Pain is Metal Gear Solid V, which begs the question, what is Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes?

After showcasing the new Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain trailer, and showing off the Fox engine at GDC, Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima posted an extended message on Twitter explaining how these different games fit together.

"Ground Zeroes" is a prologue of "MGSV". 9 years after that event will be "The Phantom Pain". MGSV is constructed w/ prologue and main game "TPP". The game play demo I presented today is the opening of "TPP" which is tutorial that starts from crawling.

It sounds like Metal Gear Solid V will be feature a similar split to Metal Gear Solid 2, with Ground Zeroes working like the opening Tanker chapter, and The Phantom Pain working like the Plant chapters that made up the rest of the game... I think.

[via Joystiq]