The REAL Naked Snake reacts to Metal Gear Solid

What can I say about Metal Gear Delta?

You're pretty good.

Hi, I'm David Hayter, and I have a couple of different careers.

I'm a filmmaker, screenwriter, X-Men, X2, Watchmen, but I'm best known as the voice actor for Solid Snake in Metal Gear Solid.

Well, I'm not gonna let these maniacs start a war today.

In that case, tell me the truth about this new type of nuclear warhead.

My name is... My name is Plissken.

Iroquois Plissken.

The rebels are out there.

How thoughtful.

So how did I incorporate the changes to each iteration of Snake each time I played them?

It depended upon the script and where Snake or Big Boss were in their lives at that point, how old they were, how much they'd been through.

So Snake in Metal Gear Solid, Solid Snake in Metal Gear Solid was already retired and sort of run down and didn't want to come back.

Your codename for this mission will be Naked Snake.

Naked Snake back in the past and Snake Eater

You know, it's sort of the beginning of his career and he's not quite as beaten down and he's fired up about where he's going to be.

And then, of course, in Metal Gear 4, he's aging rapidly.

So he's still 35, but he looks 70.

And that one was started out about here.

And then just progressively fell apart throughout the entire game and got worse and worse as his aging went on.

So, you know, it's always a matter of where the characters act and figuring it out and trying to add that nuance into each performance.

Everything has its beginning, but it doesn't start at one.

That name Paz mentioned at the end, Cipher, it's a code.

It means empty.

It also means zero.

A world of electronic intelligence built on codes.

And at the center of it all, a zero.

Kaz.

This is the oldest we've ever seen Big Boss.

And like I say, in Snake Eater, it's the beginning of his career.

So he's young and he's fired up.

Um, but by the time he's, you know, doing what he's doing in Peace Walker, he's kind of turned a little twisted and, um, he's been through a lot at this point.

So there's a lot of bitterness woven into it.

And, and, uh, just, I always look at snakes, both snakes lives as a long being dragged across a long, uh,

dirt road, and so the older they are, the rougher they sound, and that's pretty much where this performance came from.

Well, it's easiest if you can see the character either in the finished game or sometimes we just get the mocap videos.

So when I can see Snake move, I can put that movement into my performance.

If he's climbing up on something, I can add in that action sound.

To a certain extent, acting is acting, but with voiceover...

um i think you know you just have to put a little more edge onto it a little more emotion and make it make it stand out a little further so that it doesn't feel just you know dead because you don't in live acting you can use your eyes you can use your face and here you know you're dealing with computer avatars so so there's just a trick to putting a little more

uh emotion a little more texture into the voice um but hopefully not not to the point where it's ridiculous although i'm sure some would say that this is extremely ridiculous and then i'm fine and now we are the ones being tested it's always a little ridiculous so and that's okay

or work with us.

It's gonna be a lonely battle.

No good or evil, no winners or losers.

It all started with him.

Zero.

So we're standing over Major Zero, who created the Patriot, and my clone father is bringing me up to speed on what has happened in the world.

Um, the interesting thing about this is just prior to, uh, prior to this scene, Snake, um, because when he dies, he's going to like spread fox dye and create an epidemic.

So he had gone to kill himself, um, and pulled the trigger and it went bang and everything went black.

And then it turned out that he, a hot snake, had missed somehow.

So I'm not sure how that happened.

But then Big Boss showed up with Major Zero to, you know, just brief me on the state of the world before I go to Meryl's wedding, where she's going to marry Johnny Sasaki instead of me.

And then I'm going to go back to my ranch and die of old age.

I'm taking it upon myself to send Zero...

Alright, so he's going to murder Zero.

It's about doing our best.

It's about respecting the will of others and believing in your own.

Are the scripts done before we start recording?

Yes.

We, I mean, typically the Japanese version of the game

is finished first.

So the scripts are done, finalized.

You know, we can't change anything as we go.

But sometimes, like for Metal Gear 4, they were still making the game in Japan while we were recording in Japan.

in the States, in Los Angeles.

So yeah, the script was done, but again, I had to watch the Japanese mocap actors as opposed to the finished cut scenes.

So, you know, sometimes there's some crossover in the production of the games, but as far as I know, every time the scripts come to me, they're finished and unchangeable.

The biggest surprise for me, it's hard to say what the biggest surprise for me is because there's,

Every single game has insane surprises.

I mean, when I found out you had to switch the controller port to fool the psychic assassin in Metal Gear Solid, that blew me away.

And then when we did Metal Gear 2, we recorded it in order.

So I found out with everybody else after the tanker sequence that I was no longer the player character, that Raiden was going to come in.

I was going to be more the mentor.

You know, so anything shocking you find in the games probably shocked me first when I got the script.

But there's definitely been a few.

Wait up, Snake.

What?

I had expected to come in and star in the game.

Um, but you know, that's, that's Hollywood for you.

So I, I, I just rolled with that.

I was like, you know, I kind of feel like people want to play as snake.

Um,

But, you know, Quentin Flynn is a friend, and I love his performance as Raiden, and Raiden becomes extremely badass along the way.

So it was all good in the end.

Metal Gear 2 is a great game.

It's a favorite of many of the fans.

This is the final battle between Solid Snake and Liquid Ocelot.

So this is just a knock-down, drag-out fight between two older guys who really dislike each other quite a bit and have been locked in battle for decades.

This looks like the end of the fight, but this fight was so cool because they used all the different Metal Gear themes that had been written along the way to

honor the passing of the years.

Fire will spread across the world.

The people will fight.

Through battle, they will know the fullness of life.

I never really understand the philosophy of people who want fire to spread around the world.

Primarily because we live in the world and fire is uncomfortable.

So it's a strange motivation to me, but it is satisfying to beat the living bejesus out of someone with that attitude.

I do love that these guys just fought each other to utter exhaustion.

And then they have a big conversation, which is very Kideo Kojima.

We are beasts created by man.

Patrick Zimmerman as Liquid Ocelot, who's just a great actor, amazing voice.

Gracing shadows.

Nice.

The first Metal Gear, I got the script in advance.

I had some time to prepare, but it was, you know, a thousand pages.

It was just a stack of papers, and I didn't have time to go through it all.

Every game after that was top secret, so really, we get the scripts...

on the day.

And when you hear me speak a line, it's probably the first or second time that I've said it.

So that's tricky as well to make it sound fresh and spontaneous and to not be thrown by, you know, weird tangents and comments.

And there's a lot of those.

So, yeah, there are times when I as a writer might say, look,

You know, would it be clearer if we said it like this?

Or on some Japanese games, you know, I speak basic Japanese.

And on some Japanese games, I'll say, well, play the Japanese for me.

And maybe I'll get a better idea of what they're saying.

So I used to do that on like anime dubs and stuff.

But for Metal Gear, there is no change in the script.

Every word must be said as it's written in the script.

So I learned pretty early on that they weren't going to...

They didn't want any suggestions from me as a writer.

And that's fine.

That's, you know, they hire you as an actor.

And if you just hire me as an actor, then I won't do any writing.

If you're open to collaborating on the writing, then I'm happy to do it.

But yeah, Metal Gear is not that situation.

But that was some fancy shooting.

You're pretty good.

You know, the goal of storytelling, cinematic storytelling, is to

make the audience feel what the character is feeling.

And I don't think there's ever been a scene in video games that did that more effectively than this.

This is so painful to watch him go through.

This microwave tunnel was painful to perform.

And the really cruel thing about it is he just gets slower and slower.

And the player just wants to get out of there and get him free of this horrific torture.

But

the game just slows him down more and more, and you don't even know if he's going to survive to get out.

So it's just an extraordinarily emotional scene.

It just has great impact, I think.

I don't think he's going to make it.

Every time I watch the scene, I'm like, he's not gonna make it.

But this also illustrates why audiences love Snake, because he will go through absolute, literal hell to save his friends, to accomplish the mission, and to take down Metal Gear.

But again, going through the scene like this and just struggling to get Snake out of there is what really bonds people to the character.

It's not like watching a movie.

It's like you feel like you are the character and you feel like you're going through it.

So sometimes when I'll meet, you know, grown men, they'll burst into tears and are very surprised by that reaction.

But it's like, it's this weird symbiotic relationship where we've been through so much together over the years.

And it's like meeting an old friend.

So it's a very cool thing.

Just illustrates the power of well-executed art and storytelling.

Do you think if Snake had been with Meryl during that shootout that you'd married him instead of Johnny Sasaki?

I don't know.

I'm still bitter about that.

There's Sunny's fried eggs.

Looks like he finally made the eggs properly.

Good shot of his butt.

The butt has been a matter of some controversy for some time.

He's been nerfed on a number of occasions.

How is it working with Hideo Kojima?

A lot of people ask me that and the answer is I have no idea.

I've never worked with Mr. Kojima.

He makes the game in Japan and then it comes to America and then it's Chris Zimmerman Salter who has directed the English language performances of every Metal Gear game.

So I met Mr. Kojima.

He came out to visit us a couple of times, showed us cut scenes from the games.

Very nice guy, very quiet, but I've never actually sat in the booth and worked with him.

Did I realize this snake in the box was going to be so iconic?

Yeah, I believe I did off the first game.

Once I saw like him hiding in the box was was was cool, a cool idea.

But when I saw that you could actually walk around in the box and it was just two little legs.

At the bottom of the box, I was like, OK, that's hilarious.

And I thought that people would really be into that.

And I was reneged.

I think the gameplay in Metal Gear 5 is my favorite.

It's kind of the most fun to play.

But I love, you know, each of the games is different.

And the fixed camera and the way that affects the story in Metal Gear Solid is amazing.

I loved the slightly more open world feel of Snake Eater, you know, the big shell.

The gameplay is always unique and it's always incredible.

But yeah, Metal Gear 5, that open world, the way the weapons worked and just really felt very natural and extremely cool.

Something to tell you about Naomi Hunter.

What about her?

She might be a spy to kill me.

Is that all you cared about?

Frank Yeager.

The man who you destroyed was my brother and my only family.

Great Fox.

You killed my benefactor and sent my brother home.

Yeah, so this is one of my favorite sequences in the whole Metal Gear series.

In Metal Gear 4, you go back to Shadow Moses Island where you infiltrated in Metal Gear Solid, the first game I was in.

And...

It's an abandoned base, but it's locations you know, and it's super cool.

And then, coolest of all, you get to have a mecha fight between Metal Gear Rex and Metal Gear Ray.

For the first time in Metal Gear history, you as Snake get to pilot a Metal Gear and try to take down another Metal Gear.

So, brilliant sequence and one of my favorite action sequences of all the games.

Yeah, Naked Snake versus the boss.

This is arguably the most tragic sequence in gaming history, I think, where Snake is forced to go up against his former mentor and eventually you're forced, once you beat her, you're forced to kill her.

You can't move the game forward until you shoot her and it's really...

It's cruel and it's tragic.

And Laurie Allen, who played the boss, is so good in this scene.

And every time that moment comes up, I want to find some way to avoid shooting her.

But there is no way because that's just life.

We were recently doing interviews for Metal Gear Delta.

Laurie was concerned because she was like, you know, I've never played the games.

I don't remember what we did.

And so I sent her videos of the scenes we'd done together, including this one.

And then she called me back and she was in tears.

And she's like, it's so beautiful and it's so sad.

And after 20 years, she finally understood what kind of impact her performance had on people and

how devastating this storyline is.

Again, it's so gutsy of Kojima to put in something so cinematic and so tragic in an action game.

It really is like living in a movie.

Aw, is this the boss's horse?

What the hell did you do?

The horse is thinking.

You blasted.

Yeah, it's just beautiful work by everyone, by Laurie, Alan, and Kojima, and the musicians, the designers.

That's a masterpiece, that scene.

I was lucky to be a part of it.

For a Metal Gear Solid TV show, I would love for them to do it animated.

And then I would just...

So my dream casting would be me.

And all the original voice casts.

All of the Metal Gear actors pretty much are very close.

We see each other at Comic-Cons and we're friends outside of work.

And I would do whatever possible to keep that group together.

Now, if it's a $200 million live-action film...

I know Tom Rothman, the president of Sony Pictures, and we did a couple movies together, and he is unlikely to hire me to star in a $200 million movie.

I thought Oscar Isaac was a good choice.

I always loved Hugh Jackman as Solid Snake because I think he's a super nice man, looks like Snake, and while he can be super tough, he's got this softer side, this emotional side that I think is really important to playing Snake and let it not just be a flat-out Clint Eastwood tough guy.

Snake is complex and strange and

sort of driven by his love of the people he cares about.

So, um, so yeah, so I think you would be amazing and seeing some other people suggested and some of them I agree with some of them I don't.

What can I say about Metal Gear Delta?

I can't say too much about it.

I mean, I can't give you any spoilers about it, but I can say that I played the opening sequence of the game and it's spectacular.

It's so beautiful.

The work on it is just stunning.

Metal Gear 3 is arguably the most popular, the most beloved of games in the series.

And I tend to agree with that.

I think it's the most perfect

sort of full movie experience of all the games.

The location is amazing, characters are amazing, the story is great.

This is an opportunity for a new generation of players to experience that game with next-gen graphics, and it'll be primarily the original voice tracks, so it'll sound like it did back in the day.

It just should be a perfect blend of old and new, and I just hope people dig it.

What was it like when I got cast as Snake and did I know he and potentially I would become gaming icons?

I'm friends with Adam Duritz, who's lead singer for Counting Crows.

And so I had auditioned for the game and then Counting Crows was making an album up in the Hollywood Hills and I was broke.

So I would go up there because they had free food.

And I was out there, my old Motorola StarTAC cell phone rang.

And I went out to the pool, sat on the diving board, and I answered the phone.

And it was Jennifer Hale, a legendary voice actress.

And she knew how broke I was and how much I was struggling as an actor.

And she called me, and I said, hello.

And she said, guess who's going to make some money?

I was like, is it me?

Because it would be really nice if it was me.

And it turned out it was me.

So I got this part.

I was so excited.

And, uh, I went in to record, um, I had seen the Yoji Shinkawa artwork up when I did the audition.

So I knew already that, that the artwork behind it was next level and, you know, super cool.

Uh, but when I went in the first, to record the first day, they played, um, the cut scene where Snake shoots down the Hind D helicopter.

I knew that the game was going to be big.

I knew that they were taking a big swing in terms of it being cinematic and the amount of acting we were doing, the level of the writing.

You know, you do these things and they come out and if they're good, people talk about them for a couple years and then they disappear.

But that one...

was just a seismic change in gaming, and I was so lucky to be a part of it.

So yeah, so I sort of suspected it would be successful, but I had no idea it would have the impact that it ultimately did.

This has been Experts React.

Thank you so much for having me.

I hope you enjoyed the interview.

And to everyone out there, I just want to say, hey, you're pretty good.