Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes - 10 Things We Now Know About The Phantom Pain

7. The Story Will Be Incredibly Dark

In roughly 90 minutes Ground Zeroes manages to tackle the horrors of war (and more specifically the torture of prisoners) in a pitch black tone that is fairly chilling. In some scenarios that unnerving feeling is amplified because a lot of it isn't shown, it's all up to your imagination, provided you're willing to let such dark images seep into your mind before turning the tape recorder off. The game does show some horrors outright as well, like a surgically implanted bomb being removed from Paz's stomach without putting her under anaesthetics. Of course it's all for nothing, because it's also revealed that another bomb was planted inside her womb, as she sacrifices herself by falling out of Snake€™s helicopter. No one was more upfront about these themes than Kojima himself, who actually fears that The Phantom Pain may require heavy editing to pass American MPAA classifications. In Japan, Ground Zeroes is already being subjected to edits. And considering that the red band trailer for The Phantom Pain depicts waterboarding, child soldiers and more heinous acts of torture, it's going to be really interesting to see what does and doesn't make the final version.