Metal Gear's grim and competent special ops protagonist Solid Snake was only grim and quiet thanks to strict tech limitations restricting what his creator, Hideo Kojima, could do with him. Kojima made the comments in a recent interview with Japanese magazine An-An (which Automaton translated) and said the severe hardware restrictions of the MSX2, which Metal Gear first released on, meant he couldn't get too ambitious with his new creation's emotional profile.
"It was 1986 when I entered the game industry," Kojima said. "Games still couldn’t speak. Characters did not have voices. Kanji fonts weren’t supported, and you could only show one katakana character at a time. Solid Snake, the protagonist of my debut title Metal Gear (1987), was born as a silent ‘tough guy’ because of these circumstances."
Those circumstances had changed by the time Kojima and Konami developed Metal Gear Solid in 1998, when Snake had a voice actor and more things to say. However, by that point, Kojima had made Solid Snake's stoic gruffness part of the character's personality. He said he envisioned Snake as a character similar to James Bond or Lupin the Third, delivering "snappy lines" when the situation called for them. Kojima also said he attributed much of the character's popularity to David Hayter's voice work in the English version and Akio Otsuka's in the Japanese release.
Hayter reprised his role as Solid Snake (and sometimes Big Boss) in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, The Twin Snakes, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, along with a few spin-offs. While his personality remained largely the same, Konami experimented with a more involved role for Snake over the years, with Snake being rather chatty in some games and unusually reticent in others, such as Metal Gear Solid V. However, Kiefer Sutherland voiced Solid Snake in that game.
His personality in the Metal Gear Solid 3 remake won't change, though--at least in the main campaign. Konami confirmed that the studio is re-using Metal Gear Solid 3's original voice track for Metal Gear Solid 3: Delta. Hayter, however, teased new voice work in October 2024, though whether it's for a new Metal Gear game or some sneaky new additions to Metal Gear Solid 3 is anyone's guess.
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"It was 1986 when I entered the game industry," Kojima said. "Games still couldn’t speak. Characters did not have voices. Kanji fonts weren’t supported, and you could only show one katakana character at a time. Solid Snake, the protagonist of my debut title Metal Gear (1987), was born as a silent ‘tough guy’ because of these circumstances."
Those circumstances had changed by the time Kojima and Konami developed Metal Gear Solid in 1998, when Snake had a voice actor and more things to say. However, by that point, Kojima had made Solid Snake's stoic gruffness part of the character's personality. He said he envisioned Snake as a character similar to James Bond or Lupin the Third, delivering "snappy lines" when the situation called for them. Kojima also said he attributed much of the character's popularity to David Hayter's voice work in the English version and Akio Otsuka's in the Japanese release.
Hayter reprised his role as Solid Snake (and sometimes Big Boss) in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, The Twin Snakes, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, along with a few spin-offs. While his personality remained largely the same, Konami experimented with a more involved role for Snake over the years, with Snake being rather chatty in some games and unusually reticent in others, such as Metal Gear Solid V. However, Kiefer Sutherland voiced Solid Snake in that game.
His personality in the Metal Gear Solid 3 remake won't change, though--at least in the main campaign. Konami confirmed that the studio is re-using Metal Gear Solid 3's original voice track for Metal Gear Solid 3: Delta. Hayter, however, teased new voice work in October 2024, though whether it's for a new Metal Gear game or some sneaky new additions to Metal Gear Solid 3 is anyone's guess.
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