Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes is a prologue to Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. It offers players new sneaking and traversal methods compared to its predecessors, as well as the choice in what order the story events take place by selecting missions by advance. The most important change for this title is the shift to an open world design with a real-time day and night cycle doing away with the linear mission approach of previous games. The game was originally developed as a mission for The Phantom Pain, but an extended development time resulted in director Hideo Kojima splitting the specific portion of the game as a stand-alone product so that players could get early access to Metal Gear Solid V.