Kojima Productions has tweeted today that a major announcement regarding the eagerly awaited Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain will be made very soon.
The tweet, which can be found below, contains a direct link to Konami’s official website for The Phantom Pain, which now has a countdown timer ticking away until the eventual reveal.
Big Boss’ 1980s-themed watch is situated at the centre of the website, while next to it is the character’s phantom cigar.
Clicking on the cigar will speed up the clock—similar to the effect that it will have in The Phantom Pain’s day/night cycle—and Donna Burke’s “Sins of the Father” begins to play, but it will eventually stop and a woman’s voice (which is also Burke) says “Function unavailable.”
Announcement Coming Soon….http://t.co/y2zvIH22ch pic.twitter.com/gJJbgHw2Hx
— 小島プロダクション (@kojima_pro) March 2, 2015
While the announcement is currently two days away—at the time of writing this, of course—speculation is that The Phantom Pain’s long-awaited release date will be confirmed.
The annual Game Developers Conference will be running from March 2nd to March 6th in San Francisco, California, and it was at this event in 2013 that series creator Hideo Kojima confirmed that The Phantom Pain and its prologue, 2014’s Ground Zeroes, would be released separately.
The Phantom Pain, which will be the first fully-fledged open-world installment in the franchise, takes place nine years after the events of Ground Zeroes, as Big Boss awakens from a coma and begins the reconstruction of his mercenary organization (rebranded from ‘Militaires Sans Frontières’ to ‘Diamond Dogs’).
Running on Kojima Productions’ Fox Engine, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is rumored to launch in Q2 of 2015 for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.