Game designer Hideo Kojima took to Twitter (or more specifically, TwitLonger) last night to drop some insight into Metal Gear Solid V's production status.
According to Kojima, the motion capture work on the game is done, but the team still needs to tackle facial capture and voice recording.
"Such a large-scale Mo-cap is all done, but the game itself needs more time to be completed. We still need to shoot game motion, in addition to voice recording, facial capturing. And moreover implementing those tremendous volume of data takes tremendous amount of time and effort."
Kojima stated that he believes this is the end of the first phase of the production, which comprised of auditioning, training, rehearsing, and finally shooting the actors.
"If it were movie creation, post-production and editing will follow after shooting, plus adding audio but since it is game we have a lot to go. But still I feel content as this is the 1st end of phases. This time it took over a year including auditioning, 3D capturing, military training, reading, rehearsing and shooting."
Finally, Kojima explained some of the details regarding his motion capture process.
"We have been doing Mo-Cap for over 14 years ago but every time we'd done a new challenge. This time we hired foreign actors except stuntmen. They were wide variety of actors from America, UK, France, Holland, Hungary etc. We used neutral language to communicate but the emotion was tightened as one."
All in all, it sounds like Metal Gear Solid V is far from completed, and we may be looking at least another year of development. Hopefully Kojima stays this candid throughout its production though, as I know many Metal Gear fans can't wait to know more.
If you'd like to see more of the game, the GDC Vault has released a 90 minute panel featuring Hideo Kojima, CG art director Hideki Sasaki, tech director Junji Tago, and lighting artist Masayuki Suzuki demonstrating some of the tech that is going into the upcoming game. You can watch that here.