Australian singer-songwriter Donna Burke has recently discussed her involvement in the Metal Gear Solid franchise, working with series creator Hideo Kojima and the important aspects behind some of the songs she’s written and recorded.
Speaking to Gaming.moe, Burke revealed that recording the voice of the iDroid, a core piece of equipment utilised by Big Boss in Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes and The Phantom Pain, required the singer to try out multiple voices before the final one was selected.
“For example, with the iDroid voice I did for Metal Gear Solid V recently, I went in and did a few different types of voices,” she said. “Eventually I just hit on one where they said, “Yes, yes, that one!” — which is basically how I talk on the Shinkansen. Sometimes they might have to say, “Oh, you sound a little bit different.” But most of the time, you just lock it in and off you go.”
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain’s “Red Band” E3 2013 trailer was accompanied by Burke’s lyrically-driven, awe-inspiring “Sins of the Father” theme, and the Australian described the song as “The best song I’ve ever done.”
“I have to say, I got a bit of a thrill every time I heard my own voice,” she explained. “It’s such an awesome, fabulous song. It’s such an honor, honest to god.”
According to Burke, Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima was not present when she recorded “Sins of the Father” for The Phantom Pain in L.A., but she did say that the Japanese developer turned up during the voice-over work for the iDroid.
“Hmmm, well, he didn’t come to LA for the main recording with us… we actually flew to LA for the main recording of the song,” she added. “Kojima-san wasn’t there, but Honda-san was. [Ludwig Forsell], poor darling, was stuck on Skype half-asleep watching the recording.
“For the iDroid, though, he was in the recording for that. He’s very involved in that part. That’s not to say he wasn’t involved in the Sins of the Father recording, he just wasn’t physically there.”
Burke’s been involved with the MGS franchise since she sang Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker’s main theme, “Heavens Divide,” in 2010, and she spoke about how writing English lyrics with a Japanese melody can be a “challenging” experience.
“With Heaven’s Divide, I was given the lyrics, and I didn’t really like a couple of them,” she explained “But looking back, I didn’t even know what the song was for at the time — I tend to operate from a position of not knowing much, but because of my background in improv, I’m quite comfortable not knowing everything.
“So with Heaven’s Divide, there were a couple of lyrics I didn’t like, so I suggested different lyrics to Honda-san and the team accepted them. For Sins of the Father, he gave me a few demos — he came to me with two different songs, and he wanted me to fake lyrics to the songs, which I did.
“He said that Kojima-san just wanted to feel what it sounds like. So I wrote my fake lyrics, sang the two songs, and they said “We like this one better, but we like this part of the other song,” so they kind of melded them together.”
The Phantom Pain, which includes the multiplayer component Metal Gear Online, had its rumoured February 24th, 2015 release date dismissed by a Konami representative towards the end of last year, while Hideo Kojima has been making significant headway in his eagerly awaited open-world stealth title.
Running on Kojima Productions’ Fox Engine, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is rumoured to launch in Q2 of 2015 for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.