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[Henkka]

He should be glad he didn't have to partake in the mess that is MGSV's story.

 

[Apath]

I mean, nothing against Hayter and I don't blame him for being upset, but I just never thought he was a good VA--at least when it came to his voicing of Snake/MGS.

It just seemed like the natural thing to do was move on from him and I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner.

 

[Tapejara]

Sutherland as Snake was like Dinklage as not-guilty spark. Probably sounded good on paper, but sucked pretty bad in practice.

Sutherland gave a great performance; it's hyperbole to compare the two.

 

[Hwoar]

I also lost some of the love for Hideo / Mgs

 

[RiderKairuu]

I think Sutherland voicing Snake actually softened the blow a little bit. With the amount of dialogue, I think minimal Hayter would be just as weird as no Hayter at all.

 

[Shredderi]

I also lost some of the love for Hideo / Mgs

Yeah my confidence in Kojima suffered a mild blow after MGSV.

 

[RealityCheque]

Hayter is and always will be Snake.

I enjoyed MGSV but Sutherland's voice performance was one of the least memorable things about it.

 

[Aselith]

Hayter would come back if he was called. Who is he kidding? Voice actors are always looking for work. Hayter's not even in demand.

 

[Ryouji Gunblade]

Who on Earth likes Sutherland more than Hayter as Snake?

Yo. And I used to prefer Hayter.

 

[Bobs Big Boy]

What have you done for us lately?

 

[MCD]

Sutherland > Hayter in terms of performance but if I were Konami I would still go for Hayter due to familiarity.

 

[Breakage]

I was surprised at this - especially the bit about Kojima wanting to find a replacement for Hayter as early back as MGS3. Seems like Kojima was more concerned about aligning his name with a big Hollywood actor even it meant dumping an iconic voice for an inferior result.

 

[213372bu]

Yeah, I loved him in that game too. It just didn't really make any sense doing it with MGSV. Even with

Spoiler

Venom Snake as the actual protagonist, you still have Sutherland playing the real Big Boss.

As strange as Hayter was in Peace Walker, it's nothing a good voice director couldn't have gotten in order for MGSV; hell, that's probably why Peace Walker was so over the top in the first place. "Do Snake, but like... if Snake was Tom Waits!"

Yeah, I totally agree.

Even in an interview with Hayter pre-MGSV he had his Snake voice sounding pretty good, albeit for just a few lines.

The decision wasn't devastatingly horrible imo

Spoiler

, but like you said, at least getting him or Doyle to do the last few lines with Big Boss would've been a nice inclusion.

But it is what it is, and I'll lol if Hayter returns with Konami's Big Boss Pachinko machine or whatever the next Metal Gear that Konami has said they were going to do.

 

[Raist]

I dunno, the whole story doesn't quite make sense.
Still, he IS Solid Snake in a way, and I think mpst people will remember him rather than Sutherland.

 

[NumberThree]

Shouldn't replacing Hayter make sense because MGSV SPOILERS

Spoiler

Punished Snake is not Big Boss?

But

Spoiler

Big Boss isn't voiced by Hayter either

 

[DrunkShogun]

Seems kojima didn't want hayter for big boss from the start and I have to agree with that choice. Hayter voice was getting worse in every game so I wasn't too upset to see him go.

 

[eso76]

I would have taken Kurt Russel for MGS3, frankly

 

[Movalpolos]

You were always a tool for Kojima's creation, Hayter.
It's his game, not yours. Don't take it too personally.

 

[Keasar]

Turns out he was right.

The new Snake sucked. Had barely any to no personality, talked mostly in small grunts and few worded questions and didn't add anything to the story of the game at all except being there. Replacing him with Sutherland was a completely pointless move in the end since it did nothing for the character.

Hayter remains the best Snake. Sutherland was just awfully boring.

Sutherland gave a great performance; it's hyperbole to compare the two.

How can you tell? He barely gave any performance at all.

 

[Victarion]

Screw Sutherland and Venom Snake. MGSV Spoiler

Spoiler

He aint the real Snake anyway.

 

[DangerMouse]

He will always be the real Snake to me.

This.

Hayter was awful in Peace Walker and I'm glad I didn't have to listen to a second of that growling nonsense voice in Ground Zeroes or The Phantom Pain.

Kiefer might have been boring but he didn't sound like a joke. Hayter's Snake voice is a parody of itself at this point.

Hayter can still do the earlier Snake voice he was just doing what he was asked to regarding how gravelly he made the voice in the later games.

Even relatively recently, sometime before MGSV came out, when asked to do it (I can't remember if it was a podcast interview or a con panel or something) he spoke a bunch of lines in the less gravelly earlier Snake voice.

 

[Roufianos]

Kiefer Sutherland, Open World, Norman Reedus, Cliffy B.

Kojima's lost the plot and is all about Hollywood and imitating Western game design.

 

[AusRoachman]

Dude would be a nobody without Kojima, so perhaps show a little bit of respect for making you so much money.

Regardless of if they replaced you it's his franchise so he can go with whatever vision he feels like . Be happy they keot the series going for so long.

 

[Jonneh3003]

It's not his character. He needs to get over it, move on and stop talking about it.

I disagree, Hayter is as much Snake as Daniel Radcliff is Harry Potter. He may not own the character but he is the character, Sutherland's rendition of Snake was pretty dull but mostly because his personality was poorly written. That's either a design discussion or a budget one.

David didn't say anything that's unreasonable, he has little respect for Kojima, why should he? He replaced him in a long running series without letting him know. Kojima has talent but he was far too ambitious with MGS5 and lost many partners because of it.

 

[Ban Puncher]

If Kojima wanted his Hollywood star but couldn't lure Kurt Russell and Konami wanted to save a few dollars instead of wasting big bucks on Kiefer Sutherland, there was one man they could of called.

 

[SolidSnakex]

I don't know if this is BS or not, but this is a very interesting post from a different perspective.

MGS from a Korean's perspective

Highlighting/quoting some parts

What I want to say is, that despite how much Kojima loves Western culture, MGS games are 'Japanese' game created by 'Japanese'. Many people say David Hayter is 'the' only Snake, but that's actually kinda wrong. Because to the creators of MGS, Akio Ohtsuka is 'the' Snake. Did you know some of the behaviors Snake show in MGS games are direct reference to Akio Ohtsuka in real life? For example, Snake somethimes smells the scent of cigar's filter before smoking it. This is a reference to Ohtsuka's smoking habit. Or what about that heartwarming scene in the epilogue of MGS4? Akio Ohtsuka's father, Chikao Ohtsuka acted Big Boss in that scene. Not to mention in the motion capture session of that scene, Akio and Chikao hugged each other in real life. Oh, and that famous "Kept you waiting, huh?(Matasetana?)" dialogue? It was originally an ad lib done by Akio. Some of the localization changes made in English version is also not intended by Kojima. Such as English version of Mei Ling's Chinese accent. At one time, Kojima himself also complained in the early episode of Hidechan Radio that the English version of MGS games doesn't correctly reflect the direction he intended.

Now to the main part. Many non-Western gamers who only plays Japanese version of MGS, think the Hayter's acting of Snake isn't great. Yes, some of the Western players also complained about his acting in 4 and Peace Walker, but it's more than that. Many of us think that Hayter's voice sounds too monotonous. And sometimes the game's direction itself suffers from that. In the Japanese version of MGS2, Akio voiced both Solid and Solidus, but you can cleary see the subtle difference between two characters' voice. This is because Kojima wanted to show how those two brothers with the same gene have grown to become different person compared to the other. But this couldn't be done in the English version of MGS2 because of Hayter's acting range, and Solidus ended up voiced by John Cygan.

So the truth is, Kojima wanted to change Snake's English VA simply because he didn't like Hayter's depiction of Snake. Some people say it is disrespectful to make VA of the character have a re-audition for the sequels, but this sort of thing happens alot in the industry. For example, VA of Kamille Bidan, the protagonist of anime Zeta Gundam, had to participate in audition for the VA of Kamille again in the movie version of Zeta Gundam. No matter how much time the VA spent his time with his character, the creators have a right to change that VA if they think he doesn't depict their intended vision of the character very well.

 

[Vex_]

To the people saying "he needs to get over it", do we know if he was asked to speak on this again??.... Or did he just come out of nowhere with this?

 

[Keasar]

I disagree, Hayter is as much Snake as Daniel Radcliff is Harry Potter. He may not own the character but he is the character, Sutherland's rendition of Snake was pretty dull but mostly because his personality was poorly written. That's either a design discussion or a budget one.

David didn't say anything that's unreasonable, he has little respect for Kojima, why should he? He replaced him in a long running series without letting him know. Kojima has talent but he was far too ambitious with MGS5 and lost many partners because of it.

Yup. People really get the wrong idea when they say that "This voice actor isn't actually the character" when they have portrayed that character for years and been a part of why it is popular. For the same reason people get upset when characters in movies/TV-series gets their actor replaced, the same goes for how it is with voice actors. I still personally prefer Michael Ironside as Sam Fisher in Splinter Cell, because his voice acting made part of who Sam Fisher was for me, Eric Johnson just can't compare.

And let's face it, people are holding Kojima in a little too high regard. Kojima was not a god of making good decisions, MGS5 showed he was starting to get bad ideas mixed in and his writing got even worse with the least interesting MGS story in the series with a boring antagonist, worse than ever protagonist and poor plot.

 

[DeadOnions]

Kurt Russell would have been great. Hayter calling it humiliation is a bit strong though.

 

[Hahs]

I would have taken Kurt Russel for MGS3, frankly

Good ole' Snake Plissken...he'd have to drop the John Wayne voice though.

 

[Moronwind]

I don't know if this is BS or not, but this is a very interesting post from a different perspective.

MGS from a Korean's perspective

Pretty sure it's all factually correct. Western players have a very skewed perspective on this, the people who actually make these games most certainly didn't see Hayter as THE voice of Snake. A good example of this is Metal Gear Solid 4, do you think they would have even considered having Snake return as an old man had they kept David Hayter's performance from the previous games in mind? Akio Ohtsuka's deep and commanding voice was a natural fit for the role, meanwhile David Hayter had to massacre his already pretty strained vocal cords to create some bizarre approximation of what an older version of his Snake might sound like.
Bringing in Keifer Sutherland seemed like an attempt to give Snake an English voice that's more authentic to the Japanese original. As for myself, I think he was a big improvement.

 

[Pie and Beans]

Still not over it then and this:

“Yeah, that’d be 60 hours of humiliation I can’t wait to get to.”

makes him sound like the biggest fucking baby possible. He's handled himself truly terribly over the years during this, and he now comes across as hugely washed up due to doing any Kickstarter that will give him feint attention.

 

[AHA-Lambda]

Shouldn't replacing Hayter make sense because MGSV SPOILERS

Spoiler

Punished Snake is not Big Boss?

Except

Spoiler

big boss is still played by Keifer

 

[POWERSPHERE]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA28-cm9DeA

Holy shit that's the worst 3 minutes ever created

 

[BocoDragon]

I like that Korean poster's points about Akio Ohtsuka's mannerisms being a part of the Snake character.....

But I value his opinion on the quality of Hayter's voice acting and what "many of us think" about as much as I value any "sub>>>dub" weeaboo viewpoint. Him being Korean gives him no more insight into the objective quality of the Japanese or English dub or what "the creators" think... in fact, it probably gives him less insight, because he isn't experiencing either version as a native speaker. It's worth about as much as the average opinion of a gaffer with an anime avatar.

 

[SlipperyFishes]

Dude would be a nobody without Kojima, so perhaps show a little bit of respect for making you so much money.

Regardless of if they replaced you it's his franchise so he can go with whatever vision he feels like . Be happy they keot the series going for so long.

Dude had a pretty good run of screen writing without Kojima. I don't think Kojima had any part in getting Hayter the gigs writing the X-Men 1&2 and Watchmen screenplays.

So he's hardly a nobody. And Kojima can't teach that.

 

[JBwB]

I don't know if this is BS or not, but this is a very interesting post from a different perspective.

MGS from a Korean's perspective

Honestly I was wondering when someone was going to link / reference this reddit comment.
It really does give an interesting perspective on how MGS is viewed in other non-western regions.

 

[Movalpolos]

Still not over it then and this:



makes him sound like the biggest fucking baby possible. He's handled himself truly terribly over the years during this, and he now comes across as hugely washed up due to doing any Kickstarter that will give him feint attention.

Agreed.

 

[Jonneh3003]

Still not over it then and this:



makes him sound like the biggest fucking baby possible. He's handled himself truly terribly over the years during this, and he now comes across as hugely washed up due to doing any Kickstarter that will give him feint attention.

He clearly has an emotional attachment to the series and character, its not unreasonable in the slightest. He's not calling Sutherland bad, he's not calling Kojima bad, he just doesn't want to play the game in the series where his role has been replaced. What's wrong with that? He's been incredibly professional about the casting since day 1, I'm sure most people would make far more of us a fuss than just saying "I don't want to play the game where my role was replaced".

 

[Pie and Beans]

He's been incredibly professional about the casting since day 1

I'm not sure what alternate reality you're transmitting from, but in this one Hayter was about as unprofessional over the Sutherland casting as it gets.

 

[Movalpolos]

I also lost some of the love for Hideo / Mgs

Why? Because you didn't get the game you wanted?

 

[sammyCYBORG]

If Sutherland added something to the game you could understand it, cos he's clearly better than Hayter, but he didn't, so it just seems like a stupid/dick move from Kojima. Especially as V basically doesn't have a story.

 

[nel e nel]

I came in here specifically for a "Hayter's gonna hayte" joke

Don't hate the player, play the Hayter?

#dadjoke

 

[omonimo]

Link:

http://kotaku.com/original-snake-voice-actor-david-hayter-has-no-love-for-1767265986



The original interview was found in the Game Informer podcast.

Link below.

David Hayter: Playing Metal Gear Solid V Would Have Been '60 Hours Of Humiliation'

WTF? Why Hayter thought it was humiliating? I think Kojima preferred a more famous actor for MGS V. He starts to seem too much egocentric now.

 

[Jonneh3003]

I'm not sure what alternate reality you're transmitting from, but in this one Hayter was about as unprofessional over the Sutherland casting as it gets.

He's sad he lost his long running role. He hasn't said anything to discredit anyone and I think he's been extremely professional. He doesn't have any love for Kojima but admits he's a talented developer, there is nothing wring with that. Does everyone here in a lower portion of the hierarchy have love for the guy at the top who they've never seen?

No one is at fault for the recasting as it was done for the benefit of the series but Kojima is certainly in the wrong for how he went about letting David know. Imagine reading online that your job was just given to someone else, its outrageous for any work place. I don't know why we have so many anti Hayter's here, he isn't in the wrong.

 

[nel e nel]

Good ole' Snake Plissken...he'd have to drop the John Wayne voice though.

Plissken didn't use the JW voice, you're thinking of Jack Burton

 

[BBboy20]

Especially since Kojima met with Norman Redus and they never even got to make good on silent hills.

Hollywood or bust for him.

Solidus ended up voiced by John Cygan

That was probably worth it though.

 

[Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew]

Pretty sure it's all factually correct. Western players have a very skewed perspective on this, the people who actually make these games most certainly didn't see Hayter as THE voice of Snake. A good example of this is Metal Gear Solid 4, do you think they would have even considered having Snake return as an old man had they kept David Hayter's performance from the previous games in mind? Akio Ohtsuka's deep and commanding voice was a natural fit for the role, meanwhile David Hayter had to massacre his already pretty strained vocal cords to create some bizarre approximation of what an older version of his Snake might sound like.
Bringing in Keifer Sutherland seemed like an attempt to give Snake an English voice that's more authentic to the Japanese original. As for myself, I think he was a big improvement.

As much as Keifer was an improvement, putting him as Snake means that future MGS games will also have limited dialogue because it seems like Keifer doesn't come for cheap. That and his voice was so similar to Miller and Ocelot's that at times it was hard to distinguish voices when they never showed the people talking.

I hope they recast Snake and Ocelot for future MGS games. Better yet, I hope there are no future MGS games.

 

[Mr. RHC]

aw poor Hater
you were too good for that game anyways.

I think seeing Kojima's next game will truly tell me if I respect Kojima or not.

I have no idea if the reason I respect the Metal Gear games are because of his decisions, or the talent of those he worked with. I know this isn't a popular opinion, but I don't respect his decisions with sloppy story telling and unabashed pervert stuff.

On topic:
Hayter was the best.

Good. Replacing Hayter was a terrible mistake and Phantom Pain is one of the worst games
I've ever experienced. Kojima has sucked in my book for quite a while.
I don't have any love for him either

MGS was garbage after 3 anyway (IMHO) so Hayter, you are better off, and Kojima I'm not expecting much from him TBH, him and Konami are the mistakes...

Nothing compares to Kojima's scripts, for better or worse.

Hoping to see a fresh face take over Metal Gear, personally. They'd likely try and make things right with Hayter, and might actually try and make things right with the fans. MGS5 was baaaaaad.

At the end of the day, Hayter won by not being part of that abomination of a story that was MGSV.

Kojima blessed him by not putting him in MGSV.

If you think about it, playing MGSV is 60 hours of humiliation wether you're David Hayter or not.

I don't blame the guy. You voice the character for so long and all of a sudden they simply replace you with no explanation. It's alright though, Hayter voiced Snake in the actual Metal Gear games.

Everything besides gameplay in MGSV is absolute garbage.
Including the VA change.

Im actually on Konami's side as far as Metal Gear goes, they had to force it out because it looks like even Kojima didn't know where he was going with that pile of shit.

He should be glad he didn't have to partake in the mess that is MGSV's story.

Some of the self righteouness in this thread, eh?

Some of you* have been busy making the utmost shitty memes, redundant hype trains, Hayter voice acting speculation etc. for a good portion of the time between the releases of Rising, Ground Zeroes and MGSV.

I recognize some in this thread. You think you are the right people to judge the quality of Kojima's writing or his hiring policy? I don't fucking think so.
Frankly, this entitlement fanboyism fad is really getting old and does not belong to this site, it belongs to GameFAQs.

And frankly I'm not even sure if Kojima cared about Hayter all that much to begin with. Why would he? He is friends with awesome people like Akio Otsuka who has probably been doing an awesomely consistent job voicing Snake in Japanese sans drama.

This fandom took a nosedive with your contributions, almost as bad as whatever you think you have gathered of MGSV's plot. When I was browsing the MGS Community thread I saw this picture and look how appropriate it is.

Some self reflection at least.

It's over. Metal Gear is over, David Hayter is over, the memes, Jack, are over.

Kojima Productions is alive.

*not all quoted

 

[MrCunningham]

Hayter gonna hate.