Modders achieve Hideo Kojima's original vision for Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain by fully integrating the Ground Zeroes mission

Whether they're adding tank controls to Resident Evil 2 Remake or making dragon marriage legal in Skyrim, mods are capable of beautiful things. The latest example lets Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain players experience the game the way Hideo Kojima originally envisioned: with Ground Zeroes serving as a prologue at the beginning.

Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes was originally being developed as the opening mission and prologue to The Phantom Pain, but it was split off and released as a separate game because Kojima wanted fans to have something to play when the new generation of consoles, then the PS4 and Xbox One, released. However, Kojima reiterated in a 2023 social media post that the original plan was for Ground Zeroes to simply be a prologue quest in The Phantom Pain.

It only took 11 years, but you can finally play the two games as if they were one, as Kojima originally envisioned. Created by RLC and uploaded to NexusMods by CapLagRobin, the mod fully integrates Ground Zeroes' campaign, which takes place a few months after Peace Walker, to the beginning of The Phantom Pain, bridging the two games into a cohesive whole that theoretically is more true to Kojima's original vision.

The modder admits "many issues persist" and there are some "features not implemented," but if you follow the instructions (which require you to own a copy of Ground Zeroes), the Ground Zeroes mission will be added to The Phantom Pain's mission list on the iDroid. By default, the game will transition into the Ground Zeroes mission automatically after you beat Episode 1: Phantom Limbs, but there are options to let you turn off automatic transitions.

Of course, this also means Ground Zeroes' Camp Omega map is now fully explorable in The Phantom Pain's free roam system, allowing you to run around as Venom, do fun stuff like Fulton extractions, and even do side ops. There's no way of knowing if these elements were added in a way that's entirely faithful to Kojima's original plans, but until we get an official re-release bridging the two games together, this is by far the closest we've got to the developer's original vision.

10 years later, Metal Gear Solid 5 remains a masterpiece that was never going to live up to its own hype