Original Snake Voice David Hayter Has No Love For Hideo Kojima (Kotaku)

Slime said:
Hayter provided a goofy dumb cartoon voice for a goofy dumb cartoon story.

He was a perfect fit for the games he did, but it makes just as much sense why he'd be replaced in the entry that takes itself way too seriously and has no soul whatsoever.

On that note, they really should have recast Huey too. Too much personality in a game full of robots spouting soulless exposition.
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2edgy4me
You can strap balloons on to goats and slide down a hill into a bunch of guards with a cardboard box that has an anime girl poster taped on it.
It doesn't take itself too seriously.
 
Hayter is Snake to me, and I honestly don't see his comments as a big deal since he was asked about it in an interview. It's not like he jumped on Twitter and randomly started bad mouthing Kojima.
 
RevolverRoden said:
2edgy4me
You can strap balloons on to goats and slide down a hill into a bunch of guards with a cardboard box that has an anime girl poster taped on it.
It doesn't take itself too seriously.
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Oh, I love the game itself. I've played it for 120 hours. Shit's fun.

Every cutscene and tape is garbage, though. It's a series of meaningless vignettes and heavy-handed exposition. None of the characters actually seem like individual characters. It absolutely takes itself too seriously.
 
RevolverRoden said:
2edgy4me
You can strap balloons on to goats and slide down a hill into a bunch of guards with a cardboard box that has an anime girl poster taped on it.
It doesn't take itself too seriously.
Click to expand...

The actual main story does, though. There's no fun stuff like Raikov or Liquid on the Volta.
 
...maybe it was because David Hayter was phoning it in with the last couple of games he did and wasn't doing any better with those visual graphic novels they were making in recent years as well?

David Hayter was great in MGS1 and 2, and his performance in MGS1 is my favorite in any video game. But after that his performances were slipping and it got comically bad by MGS4 and PW. It's pretty clear to me now that he felt entitled to the role, and now he is acting like a spoiled brat when he got replaced.
 
Slime said:
Oh, I love the game itself. I've played it for 120 hours. Shit's fun.

Every cutscene and tape is garbage, though. It's a series of meaningless vignettes and heavy-handed exposition. None of the characters actually seem like individual characters. It absolutely takes itself too seriously.
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Well not EVERY cutscene heheh
http://youtu.be/0xeGE_5kSI0
Henkka said:
The actual main story does, though. There's no fun stuff like Raikov or Liquid on the Volta.
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http://youtu.be/0xeGE_5kSI0
Might've been unintentional fun tho heh
 
Saven said:
...maybe it was because David Hayter was phoning it in
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He was directed to "phone it in." All voice acting issues come down to the voice director at the end of the day, assuming you don't get Kojima or someone else coming in during sessions and declaring "redo!"
 
I have a bit of rose-tinted glasses for Hayter as well. Having said that, as I grew up, I had hard time appreciating Hayter's cartoony performance as Snake. It culminated in MGS4, where Hayter laid on the gravelly and nasally goofiness to the point of annoyance. Snake was never supposed to be a eccentric character -- he was supposed to balance the personalities of the wacky villains.

So I'll say this, and a lot of you will not like it: Sutherland is objectively a better Snake than Hayter. Kiefer took the role seriously and made Big Boss the grizzled soldier he was supposed to be, and in a way that was not forced. The only thing that hurt was that he needed a more flamboyant Ocelot to balance it, which the script and Troy Baker failed to deliver.

I'll bet if Konami ever does make a new MGS, they'll bring back Hayter to try and get in fans' good graces, but at that point, will we care enough to be interested in a non-Kojima MGS? No.
 
Henkka said:
Yeah I don't really know if that was supposed to be fun ... But it was yeah, :D

There are some intentionally comedic bits but they don't really work... Like Huey having that silly bag on his head, and Snake pulling it down. But it feels really forced, almost like the humour in BvS.
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I never knew that was even supposed to be funny tbh.
I guess the birthday scene and hamburger tapes were pretty funny tho
 
The only Snake is Hayter for me. MGS5 was a joke in every aspect (expect gameplay). I miss Hayter and its to bad they let him go.
 
seat said:
I have a bit of rose-tinted glasses for Hayter as well. Having said that, as I grew up, I had hard time appreciating Hayter's cartoony performance as Snake. It culminated in MGS4, where Hayter laid on the gravelly and nasally goofiness to the point of annoyance. Snake was never supposed to be a eccentric character -- he was supposed to balance the personalities of the wacky villains.

So I'll say this, and a lot of you will not like it: Sutherland is objectively a better Snake than Hayter. Kiefer took the role seriously and made Big Boss the grizzled soldier he was supposed to be, and in a way that was not forced. The only thing that hurt was that he needed a more flamboyant Ocelot to balance it, which the script and Troy Baker failed to deliver.

I'll bet if Konami ever does make a new MGS, they'll bring back Hayter to try and get in fans' good graces, but at that point, will we care enough to be interested in a non-Kojima MGS? No.
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Which snake are we talking about here? Snakes always had his goofy moments, Sure it was no where near the villians but stuff like Naked snake fanboying out over the gun eva gives him weren't completely out of character for him. In fact thats what I enjoyed about him. Serious when the time called for it but still had plenty of room for silly codec calls and the like. And lets be honest. Metal gear solid 4 is the silliest entry in the series. So much so that it turned people off from the game.
 
After hearing one person voice a character for a really long time they essentially become cemented as that character.

Like David Hayter for Snake, Reuben Langdon for Dante, Nolan North for Drake, kind of like that.

From what I've seen/read the Japanese VA industry is really good about keeping the original voice actors on their characters across multiple games/shows/movies/etc. Where as with English stuff I find it's a lot more spotty, in some cases the VA changes from patch to patch like in Blade & Soul.
 
seat said:
I have a bit of rose-tinted glasses for Hayter as well. Having said that, as I grew up, I had hard time appreciating Hayter's cartoony performance as Snake. It culminated in MGS4, where Hayter laid on the gravelly and nasally goofiness to the point of annoyance. Snake was never supposed to be a eccentric character -- he was supposed to balance the personalities of the wacky villains.

So I'll say this, and a lot of you will not like it: Sutherland is objectively a better Snake than Hayter. Kiefer took the role seriously and made Big Boss the grizzled soldier he was supposed to be, and in a way that was not forced. The only thing that hurt was that he needed a more flamboyant Ocelot to balance it, which the script and Troy Baker failed to deliver.

I'll bet if Konami ever does make a new MGS, they'll bring back Hayter to try and get in fans' good graces, but at that point, will we care enough to be interested in a non-Kojima MGS? No.
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Big Boss was never a grizzled soldier. In MGS3 he was a goofy gun-loving nerd with an oedipus complex. In Peacewalker he turned full-blown moron with his interpretation of the will of the boss (and let's be honest, there was no way for him not to, because Outer Heaven was always a stupid idea and the canon required him to become stupid enough to come up with it.)

Kojima himself deconstructed the idea of "the badass soldier" with Raiden, both in MGS2 and MGS4.

There was a lot to like in the Metal Gear franchise, but let's be real : there's not a single main character that isn't hammy as hell or really dumb in some way (or both, more likely.)

That might be why some people say MGV's plot took itself too seriously.

edit: bleh, beaten
 
As much as I am a huge fan of him.

Hayter forgets that Solid Snake and Big Boss are different characters.

He'll always be Solid Snake, no one can take that away from him.

So while I'm sorry to hear this has been a tough time for him and he feels resentful, I do get that.

I don't necessarily think he was ever meant to be Big Boss, he did a great job in 3 but I also understand that it could have been just as good if they found someone similar but not exactly the same, Liquid and Solidus all have completely different voices, as did Big Boss in 4.

I always figured that Old Snake being Hayter while old Big Boss was Richard Doyle was a good idea.

Solid Snake aged unnaturally fast, he was in his early 40's in MGS4, if he got to live out a natural life I'm sure he would have looked and sounded more similar to Big Boss, but otherwise I look at it like the difference between a young actor wearing makeup to look like an old person VS How they actually look and sound when they are old, so Old Snake by that logic it all made sense to me.

My issue with Hayter really starts to come in with Peace Walker where he sounds exactly like MGS4 Old Snake but Big Boss wasn't aging rapidly, he was still relatively "young", so him sounding so painfully gruff just made the game kind of hard to listen to in reality and I don't think it worked, I often felt like I needed to clear my throat or go drink water or cough or something while listening to Hayter in Peace Walker, it wasn't great and that's a real bummer.

My biggest issue with the change to Keifer is the utilization of him, as a choice I thought he was actually fantastic and sounded much closer to Japanese Big Boss, but he was utilized poorly, and changing to him right after Peace Walker made the transition very surreal and maybe a bit... sloppy, I feel like Big Boss should have been recast when they made PW since Kojima was actually already making plans to release Ground Zeroes not long after PW came out, so the direction that Big Boss's story went in was already sort of planned out, and then whoever they casted as Big Boss in PW should have carried over to MGSV, I mean hell with the way things went, Kojima should have really just bit the bullet and had Hayter come back one last time for the "Man Who Sold The World" Tape.

It would have been a more impactful and redeeming end I think despite everything else.
 
I'm a pretty big fan of the first few Metal Gear series games, but have never really thought Hayter was a strong voice actor. I just lump him in with a lot of the other actors in the early CD-ROM gaming era -- thinking these folks were kinda lucky to be there at the time when they were needed, but have since been by-and-large replaced by much better performers as voice acting and performance capture has become a more mature art.

I like to put on the nostalgia glasses as much as anyone, but I've never thought Hayter's Snake was good because of Hayter's voice being attached to it. If anything, I always thought it was over-the-top and cheesy, but it fit the rest of the Metal Gear world and story being pretty cheesy as well.
 
For me, you don't ruin the personality of a fan favourite character. Changing the VO just does that.
And not only that, Kiefer did a piss poor job, so I'm siding with Hayter.
 
blankempathy said:
Which snake are we talking about here? Snakes always had his goofy moments, Sure it was no where near the villians but stuff like Naked snake fanboying out over the gun eva gives him weren't completely out of character for him. In fact thats what I enjoyed about him. Serious when the time called for it but still had plenty of room for silly codec calls and the like. And lets be honest. Metal gear solid 4 is the silliest entry in the series. So much so that it turned people off from the game.
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MGS4 is not the silliest. That's Peace Walker.
 
Never really minded Keifer at all in the role. enjoyed his VA quite a bit despite the story being batshit dog pineapple terrible.
Also always enjoyed Hayter in Solid and Solid2. 3 he was starting to slip and by the time they got into the hand held games it was full on joke mode.

Dude needs to let it the fuck go.
 
Pristine_Condition said:
I'm a pretty big fan of the first few Metal Gear series games, but have never really thought Hayter was a strong voice actor. I just lump him in with a lot of the other actors in the early CD-ROM gaming era -- thinking these folks were kinda lucky to be there at the time when they were needed, but have since been by-and-large replaced by much better performers as voice acting and performance capture has become a more mature art.

I like to put on the nostalgia glasses as much as anyone, but I've never thought Hayter's Snake was good because of Hayter's voice being attached to it. If anything, I always thought it was over-the-top and cheesy, but it fit the rest of the Metal Gear world and story being pretty cheesy as well.
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I don't think you're going to find a lot of people that say Hayter is an amazing voice actor but merely that he fit the tone of the games and gave a voice to snake that matched that tone. It just fit. It was never horrible though. Never to the point for me that it took me out of the games. Maybe you don't remember early cd rom games voice acting. Most of it was absolutely awful. Also remember that Mgs1 was one of the first games of its caliber and a lot of games before that hadn't had voice acting that good. Hell even after mgs1 came out voice acting was pretty crappy for a while. Lucky? Thats nonsense. There are games from last gen that have worse voice acting then mgs1. Overall while voice acting has improved in gaming don't downplay the voice actors contribution by saying they were "lucky".
 
Replacing a main voice-actor has always really affected me when I played games.
When Leon Kennedy had a new voice actor in Resident Evil 6, it felt to me like Leon had died and I was playing a bland imposter. Link sounded uniquely awesome in Ocarina of Time and then never again in future Zelda games, which made those games suck even more for me.

I really liked how Solid Snake sounded in Smash Bros Brawl. Hayter has so much personality in his voice. And now that Snake is essentially dead as well?!


And here I thought they revered voice-actors in Japan.
 
Eppy Thatcher said:
Never really minded Keifer at all in the role. enjoyed his VA quite a bit despite the story being batshit dog pineapple terrible.
Also always enjoyed Hayter in Solid and Solid2. 3 he was starting to slip and by the time they got into the hand held games it was full on joke mode.

Dude needs to let it the fuck go.
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Why do people keep assuming he hasn't let it go or moved on? He's just answering the interviewers questions.
 
Venom Snake having a different voice actor ended up being OK for me. I think Sutherland handles Venom's smaller and depressed dialogue betters. That said, it's hard for me to imagine Sutherland doing Naked Snake. Sutherland commands much better but Hayter does levity and vulnerability, even wit, much better. The comedic levity with Paramedic, the wit and banter with Ocelot, and ignorance with EVA and Sokolov, and vulnerability with The Boss were superbly performed and casted.

Peace Walker is an interesting middle point because while I can't imagine Sutherland doing Snake Eater, when I recently replayed Peace Walker after beating Phantom Pain and then consecutively Snake Eater again, I found at times in Peace Walker I may have preferred Sutherland. Somewhere during Metal Gear Portable Ops and Peace Walker, Big Boss loses the levity and vulnerability that Hayter captures well and essentially becomes Sutherland's Big Boss and Venom Snake.

The reason it works for me is because Venom Snake in general has become such a different character that any disparity normally associated with a voice acting switch isn't there. But had it occurred during Peace Walker, even, it may have worked. Portable Ops, interestingly, is actually the most defining moment for me... the scene with the first recruited Soviet soldier, the last scene with Cunningham, and especially all the dialogue with Gene, transitioned Naked Snake into Big Boss even more than Peace Walker.

So, it's rather interesting because I end up appreciating both their roles: as Snake becomes Big Boss, Sutherland commands his new tone well, gives him a tone of control and certainty,leadership; but the defining part of Naked Snake is his lack of command and control -- his nakedness. And Hayter captures his iconic Snake ignorance, levitity, and vulnerability.
 
Hayters VO was iconic and fun. MGSV wasn't, Keifer was Keifer, it worked for the game as it was more a shit film than a pulp game.

Hayter is a talented guy though, Kojima is a hack now - he took the fun out of absurd eventually.
 
Death Metalist said:
It's his first gig as well, if anyone has the recent blu it has a fantastic 20+ minute interview with him about the film and it surprises me how much he remembers doing it. Also, he does the Solid Snake voice perfectly for those that say "he still can't do it".
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Yeah, that old fanmade Metal Gear remake trailer also showed that he can still do the MGS1/2 voice.
 
SolidSnakex said:
Again with the ego talk. Hayter actually believes that Kojima is jealous of him. How much of an ego do you have to have to believe that bullshit?
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I'd believe it. Kojima wants to get into films but can't.
Hayter has made a fair few films and can. Of course there's gonna be some professional jealousy.

Hayter's storytelling compared to Kojima's is what Hollywood wants and instead Kojima has teamed up with Guillermo del Toro for a project.

Kojima still hasn't got his movie.
 
nbnt said:
Sutherland sucked and Hayter is the better Snake, but still, bro, get over it.
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Seriously. Hayter acts like he created the character and owns the role. This would be like Kevin Conroy getting upset at ever other person being cast as Batman.. which is the furthest thing from the truth. Dude is humble as fuck and Hayter could learn a lot from him.
 
Hayter rubs me the wrong way as a conversationalist, but I have met some major theater actors who can be equally eccentric. The way Kris Zimmerman talks about his methods and enthusiasm is really cool.

Yeah yeah I know the popular opinion on Hayter's work since MGS1, but say what you will he does seems like he's got that artist's heart. (even if I probably couldn't stand the dude irl.)
 
Zee-Row said:
David Hayter was the voice of Lupin the 3rd in Castle of Cagliostro.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxbum3is6G0
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It's stuff like that which then makes me thing that maaaybe, just maybe, the reason hayter so often sounds forced in MGS is because he was directed to sound like that. Dude legit sounds perfectly natural there.

Went and looked up some other examples acc to wikipedia page, and yeah, when i do manage to find something on YT, dude seems to be perfectly able to carry a very distinct voice for each and every character he does. Might spot some trace of Snake here and there, but overall? Different. Certainly doesn't suffer from Nathan Drake Syndrome as much as North.

(his winter soldier is a weird snake remix, tho, no denying that. justifiable)
 
Coriolanus said:
It's stuff like that which then makes me thing that maaaybe, just maybe, the reason hayter so often sounds forced in MGS is because he was directed to sound like that. Dude legit sounds perfectly natural there.

Went and looked up some other examples acc to wikipedia page, and yeah, when i do manage to find something on YT, dude seems to be perfectly able to carry a very distinct voice for each and every character he does. Might spot some trace of Snake here and there, but overall? Different. Certainly doesn't suffer from Nathan Drake Syndrome as much as North.

(his winter soldier is a weird snake remix, tho, no denying that. justifiable)
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"Maybe"? That's the only reason.
 
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