Kojima Productions explains why Japanese Snake voice actor did not change

In their latest Kojima Productions Alert podcast, the studio talked a bit about yesterday’s show, and answered some questions sent in by fans.

First, they explained about the decision to change the voice actor. Because of advancing technologies, they are now able to do facial capture along with the vocal performance. For this game, they are not using full 3D capture, but they have plans to do this for future projects. These future KP projects should be very close to live action movies.

About Kiefer Sutherland, Kojima considered a lot of different options, different names, but Kiefer had the ‘weathered’ look. The interview shown at yesterday’s show was not scripted or coached, it was just Kiefer answering the questions.

One fan wanted to know why the Japanese voice actor for Snake (Akio Otsuka) has not changed, while the English actor (David Hayter) has. The host of the podcast, Sean Eyestone, answered:

“This time, the English voice is really driving the animation, is driving the character. In past Metal Gears, everything was done by hand: the animation was done by hand, both the English and the Japanese were dubbed in.”

“This time, the facial performance that is being done by the English voice actor is what is driving the animation, what is driving the character. And actually, Otsuka-san, who is the Japanese voice, will be dubbing into that. So his facial expressions will not be in the game, so it’s just his voice. It’s like what he’s done up to this point. So that’s more or less the reason why this casting decision was made.

I know some people may have reservations, whenever things change, people are always a little nervous. But I think if you just wait and see how things turn out, I think you’ll be very happy with the performance. I think it’s really cool and we can’t wait to show you more.”

Another listener had the following question: we know characters in the game are modeled from real people, but does this apply to characters like Big Boss and Kaz as well?

The hosts answered that the majority of the characters are based on real people, but not all of them. The goal is to achieve photorealism, so they are taking people from real life. In addition, everyone in the game will be facial captured, but not every character is 3D scanned (these are two different things). Characters such as Snake have a unique identity, so they couldn’t do 3D scan for them, unless they had someone who looks just like him, which of course is a little difficult.

Not many details about E3 were shared, just that we can expect interviews with developers on major gaming sites like GameSpot and IGN. Also, there is a big surprise coming from Kojima Productions, but we will have to wait until next week to find out.

Source: Kojima Productions Alert 002 (June 7 2013)