Killing innocents? (GZ and PP) **NO SPOILERS**

I haven't played Phantom Pain yet but I've played Ground Zeroes and I simply must play the mission non-lethal. Why you ask? Well, the two guards at the front gate themselves don't even know who Skull Face and XOF are, let alone what they are doing there. As far as I can tell they're just some random US Marines tasked with guarding what they are told are terrorists ("enemy combatants" as one puts it). One conversation between a couple guards shows that even they're uncomfortable with how locked down and intense the base is becoming. Yeah, they're not civilians, but they're just doing their job aren't they? Remember in the tanker mission of MGS2? The only enemies you were allowed to kill were the terrorists that took over the boat. The marines listening to the Metal Gear Ray speech were to be left alone and simply avoided (partly because there were so many of them! haha)

Try to answer this as best you can without spoiling anything please. Does the Phantom Pain pit you against more deserving enemies like the Cipher group and XOF soldiers or is it more of this morally ambiguous fighting against everyday grunts?

You generally always have the option to kill, but in TPP, it affects your Hero point status. Anything above 150,000 points is Hero status, anything below 100,000 points is Demon status, whereby your shrapnel "horn" will grow longer and you can't wash blood off. You CAN however gain back Hero status by doing heroic acts, some of which award more points than others.

That said, there are times you do not have the option to kill with certain personnel that fall into a gray area. I'd say more but it could spoil some of the story for you.

As for whether TPP has more "deserving" enemies, of course it does. Ground Zeroes by comparison is just Kojima's version of Guantanamo Bay. In TPP, you'll be going into areas with factions that do some petty despicable things. Just remember that if you go too kill crazy, you not only lose Hero points, you can lose valuable recruits. Plus if you Rambo it too much, the enemy will adapt with things like shields and armor, making it harder to complete some objectives.

I don't understand why you titled it "Killing innocents" though, when you're asking about soldiers more deserving of death. Not all are innocent, not even in Ground Zeroes.