Merge Metal Gear Solid V pages

I was looking over at the Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain page and noticed there was a link to Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes in the article. This was odd because while Ground Zeroes was announced first, the trailer for the game proper shows that both Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain are included in Metal Gear Solid V with Word of God saying both sections make up Metal Gear Solid V.

I'd like to propose merging the two articles, as it's unlikely that they'll be seperate releases and per the word of the creator himself are both parts of the same story instead of being different entries in a series.

edited 14th Jun '13 2:41:36 AM by Shaoken

Since I've decided to give it two weeks to let people discuss wether or not it's appropriate to merge the two pages, here are my justifications for the merger:

• Hideo Kiojima himself stated that Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain both make up Metal Gear Solid V.
• The trailer for Metal Gear Solid V shows scenes from the Ground Zeroes trailer as well as new scenes that take place at the same time period.
• The tagline for the Metal Gear Solid V trailer is "FOX vs XOF." XOF are shown in the Ground Zeroes segments, so assuming that the line isn't misdirection that would mean that XOF are antagonists in The Phantom Pain. Historically every Metal Gear game has had their antagonists relatively self-contained with plots resolved in their own entry and not spread out over two releases.
• When asked if Ground Zeroes would be released seperately, Hideo had no comment at that time. We should assume that they will be released in the one game in the same way that the Tanker Chapter of Metal Gear Solid 2 was released with the Plant Chapter, or the Virtious Mission of Metal Gear Solid 3 was released with Operation Snake Eater.
• Even if Ground Zeroes is released seperately, that situation would mirror the Dead Rising 2 situation with Case Zero, which was a prologue to the game itself but is on the same work page. Since Ground Zeroes is confirmed to be a prologue to The Phantom Pain it makes no sense to treat it as it's own self-contained work.
• Historically, prologues of works, even when released seperately, are listed on the same work page as the main story.

Actually Konami said that both would be separate.

In terms of plot and gameplay though, they are two halves of one game and are being marketed that way. I'd recommend merging, dividing them into sections at the moment until future information.

Could you get me a citation for that? Because I watched an interview with Hideo and his response when asked "will Ground zeroes be released seperately" was "We can't say at this time." The only people who have said they will be seperate releases are speculating news sites.

EDIT: So far on the offical Konami site Ground Zeroes and Phantom Pain are listed as seperate games, although niether has anything more than their trailers listed and the trailer for the latter still includes parts from the trailer for the former.

edited 29th Apr '13 1:07:14 AM by Shaoken

I say keep them separate for now, because at this point, it's really unclear as to whether Ground Zeroes and Phantom Pain are different games, or if Kojima's just trolling.

How is it unclear? Let me count the ways:

• The trailer for Metal Gear Solid V The Phantom Pain contains parts of the trailer for Metal Gear Solid Ground Zeros and parts that are obviously in that time frame.
• The tagline for V is "FOX vs XOF." XOF will be introduced in Ground Zeroes, so unless they aren't actually the main villians of V and it's all an epic deception on part of Hideo then the two parts contain the same narrative thread, which is unprecedented in the series' history.
• Hideo himself said that Ground Zeroes and Phantom Pain together make up Metal Gear Solid V. This is literal Word of God here and people are disputing that. Here is the interview to judge for yourself.
• The only real point of contention is if Ground Zeroes (the prologue) and Phantom Pain (the main story) are seperate releases. While that is a good question, here's a few arguments against putting them on different work pages:
  • Per the interview Ground Zeroes is going to be much shorter than Phantom Pain and not as open.
  • In terms of narrative there is no stop in the protagonist's perspective from Ground Zeroes to Phantom Pain. Again, this has never happened before in MGS history
  • This isn't all that different from Dead Rising 2 with Case Zero, which was a seperate release but we keep on the main work page because there's nothing to justify it being it's own short work page.
  • Going off MGS history this isn't much different from Metal Gear Solid 2 being seperated into the Tanker and Plant Chapters or Metal Gear Solid 3 being seperated into the Virtious Mission and Operation Snake Eater.

edited 30th Apr '13 1:14:48 AM by Shaoken

"The only real point of contention is if Ground Zeroes (the prologue) and Phantom Pain (the main story) are seperate releases."

That's what I meant. I know they're both part of MGS5, I was saying that, at this point, we don't know if they will both be in the same game together, or if they'll be released separately.

Fair enough, then I reiterate my Dead Rising 2 And Case Zero example. Seperate releases, same work page because Case Zero exists purely as a prologue.

Wouldn't it be easier to leave them separate until we know for sure that they should be on one page? By leaving them alone now, if it turns out that they do need separate pages, we won't have created extra work for ourselves.

That's what a folder control is for, but I can't argue with the logic presented.

@Kazy, so kinda like ACII and AC: Brotherhood, then?

Well, at E3 they just released and new trailer which shows a bit of Ground Zeroes footage, and there really hasn't been anything said about the two being separate this time.

It all hints towards Ground Zeroes being the on-disc beginning prologue to the main game. Maybe we should merge the page, but keep the articles separate until release.

On a serious note, should I split tropes related to MGS 2's Tanker chapter and MGS 3's Virtuous Mission into separate articles?

I say we put off merging the pages until release. Doing so beforehand means we're acting on less than optimal information.

Regarding Case Zero and DR 2, Case Zero has less than twenty tropes. If Ground Zeroes was of similarly limited scale, then we'd be justified in merging them.

Until then, keeping them separate and possibly merging them later will take less effort and cause fewer transfer issues than merging and possibly un-merging them later would.

Fair enough, although we probably should keep track of tropes that appear to be shared between Ground Zeroes and Phantom Pain so that if we do merge the pages we can do so easily.

For the Tanker and Plant chapter maybe, but not for the Virtious Mission and Snake Eater due to them being so close together in terms of story and sharing characters, while the Tanker and Plant chapters at least had two years and a mostly different set of characters between them.

I'll say merge them. Koji Pro has pretty much said that Ground Zeroes and Phantom Pain are different portions of the same Metal Gear Solid V and it seems the official site treats them as part of the same game.

Got a source claiming that the offical podcast confirms they are one in the same here apparantly. So, merge the pages.

edited 13th Jun '13 1:39:02 AM by Shaoken

And done. Ground Zeroes is put on the cutlist and I've moved all the tropes over. I'll do some clean-up work later to fix up any duplicates.

The title of the Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain page is a mess. It says "Video Game:Video Game/Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain". Moreover, Metal Gear Solid V The Phantom Pain is locked for some reason, preventing a redirect from being made.

Creating Main/ redirects to work pages is not allowed.

Yet all the "main" pages under Franchise/Metal Gear redirect to their respective work pages (e.g. Main/MetalGearSolid redirects to VideoGame/MetalGearSolid, so I don't know why the exception here.

Can someone at least fix the "Video Game:Video Game/Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain" glitch?

edited 28th Jun '13 5:04:21 PM by Saurubiker

They exist because they were created before they were banned, and after they get a certain number of inbound links, we can't cutlist them. In other words, they only exist because of the Grandfather Clause.

I get all that, but can you (or someone who knows how) fix the page's title so that the words "Video Game" don't appear twice?

I would, but there's already a pending request. You'll have to wait for it to be accepted by the mods first.

Alright. Thanks anyway.

The custom title request was accepted. Is there anything else that needs to be done here?