In an interview with VGC, beloved Metal Gear Solid voice actor David Hayter revealed that, not only has time healed the sting of getting recast in Metal Gear Solid 5, he has played the game and loves it.
Hayter supplied the English language voice of Solid Snake for 12 years, from Metal Gear Solid on the PS1 through Peace Walker on the PSP. He became synonymous with the role and a gaming icon that presaged the likes of Mark Meer and Jennifer Hale as Commander Shepard, or Doug Cockle as Geralt of Rivia.
Replacing Snake with Keifer Sutherland in MGS5 was not only a slap in the face to Hayter, it was difficult for fans to accept as well: A beloved talent seemingly shelved in favor of a bankable Hollywood name.
A lesser game might have been defined by such a controversy, but MGS5 was just that good, and Sutherland also put his own mark on the character, delivering a more weary, haunted version of Snake. It doesn’t hurt that Punished “Venom” Snake was written very differently from previous iterations of the character as well.
Despite Hayter’s personal pain in this—he told Game Informer in 2016 that playing MGS5 would be “60 hours of humiliation”—the actor and director has come around on PC Gamer’s 2015 game of the year. No, it wasn’t the Witcher 3. I wasn’t around back then, please don’t ask me about it.
“There was reluctance. I didn’t want to play the game because I figured it would hurt my feelings,” said Hayter. “Then, you know, 10 years went by and I was like, ‘Ah, to hell with my feelings. What do I care?’” Hayter noted that, as a screenwriter, he had gotten well used to rejection over the course of his career. “I was like, ‘Stop being a baby and play the game.’ So I played it. It’s amazing.”
Hayter jokingly likened fans telling him Metal Gear Solid 5 was their favorite entry to squeezing lemon juice into a paper cut. “And then I played it and I’m like, ‘I think this is my favorite gameplay of the series,’” Hayter said.
“The fact that you can go into the same scenario each time, and the soldier’s gonna be doing the same thing, but you can take on different routes or different strategies of attack, makes it feel like time travel. So, yes, that was badass. So far as I’m concerned, all is forgiven.”
And that goes for Keifer Sutherland himself as well, apparently: Hayter “had a bunch of drinks” with the actor at some point and judged him to be “a great guy.” Now I’m just picturing Sutherland looking Hayter square in the eye and saying, “I’m Big Boss, and you are too. No. He’s the two of us, together.”
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