Reasons for lack of Big Boss voice acting (SPOILERS)

So, after watching the utterly amazing E3 trailer, I have a theory as to why we don't hear Big Boss talk much.

Jeff said in one of the Bombcasts that when he played MGS5, he was taken back by the lack of voice work for Big Boss..he even claimed it was on the level of a silent protagonist. This got me to thinking, why would they go out of their way to hire a big name like Kiefer Sutherland to do voice work for an iconic character if you aren't going to use him? And Big Boss/Snake have never been ones to shy away from conversation..despite being gruff badasses. Dan called it right, Snake is a chatty motherfucker.

The running theme in the new trailer appears to be language. How it unites society. Idealogies, nations, patriotism..they are nothing without the spoken word to bound them all together. One of Ocelots qutoes in the trailer is something along the lines of "Don't destroy an enemy by taking their lives..destroy them by taking their tongues" Snake is relatively the same as he was in Peace Walker during the events of Ground Zeroes..but after Mother Base is destroyed and he is critically injured..something changed. Snake has no idealogies left, he no longer has a home, and he hasn't been patriotic since the events of Operation Snake Eater...he has no language. He has no voice. He has lost everything that made him who he was.

Now, I'm not saying that Big Boss has taken an oath of silence. We do indeed see him talk in previous trailers. But is no longer the man he once was. He is losing himself..including his language.

I for once cannot even wait to play this game..I haven't felt this excited any game. I can't wait to see Big Boss's descent into evil. Snake is dead..now only remains a demon.

That doesn't change your initial point though: Why spend that much on the star of 24, when David Hayter would be a much more economic option? If he's not talking that much, who cares? There is something really weird about all this, and Big Boss was hardly ever the strong and silent type, even in MG1+2.

I don't think the theme of Boss having no voice really hits, either. He will not talk on important things anymore, but he's quite willing to tell his dog to stay put or to distract an enemy? Just doesn't fit. There's some weird reveal we've yet to see. It's a shame I've come so far to see beyond a game to the meta of it all, but you don't hire Kiefer Sutherland instead of fan favourite David Hayter for nothing.

Yo Keifer is expensive. I don't think they've put that much thought into it.

I can't wait to actually play this and finally put all of this nonsense to rest.

Unless there is a huge leak about what went on behind the scenes, I will continue to believe that it is because Keifer was so expensive. Even if it makes sense in the narrative, I bet they made creative compromises to make sure it makes some kind of sense. Word came down from the top to make it work, because they had blown their budget.

Turns out you can play different characters in, what I assume, will be a vast chunk of the open world/side stuff. That instantly removes a tonne of potential dialogue. I honestly think the voice switch is just pointless and will just lessen the experience for MGS fans, considering this is the last game Kojima will even be able to work on.

I'm sticking by my theory that Kiefer is only here because the game will end with young Solid Snake v. Big Boss in some way, shape, or form. Cant really have Hayter doing two character's voices that sound exactly the same. Its Konami though, so who the hell knows.

A lot of BB's dialogue actually comes from cassettes you listen to, they replace the codec calls for the most part.

Kojima has said he just doesn't want the character to talk as much in this game, less cutscenes in general too.

As I said in another thread: like 75% of Snake's dialogue is just asking simple questions or repeating words he was just told as a question. People are way overrating the importance of Snake's dialogue in previous games.

I'm hoping the game does more showing and less telling. A weakness in the series, as much as I love it.

I'm not banking on any kind of twist or misleading efforts by Kojima (like the Raiden bait and switch) but as long as there is precedent I get why some think that.

If it's anything like Peace Walker, they are just gonna dump all the Big Boss dialogues into a separate radio section. Barring story sequences, Snake was pretty silent in that game too. Most of the missions in Peace Walker allowed you to swap in generic soldiers in place of Snake. And seeing as this game seems like it's mechanically a sequel to Peace Walker that would make some sense if a lot of the game footage we've seen are taken from submissions. They seemed generic enough.

He's got a big peice of shrapnel in his head, he was in a coma for nine years, the trauma from all the events got him enough to make him lose a lot of the Russian skills he had. Add Kojima's design decision to go more serious this time and less codec-call goofy to that, and there we are. And Big Boss is nearing his 50's in the game, more like 40's with the nine years in coma, he is messed up bad and you know what happens to people who go through barely a bit of what he did in real life? They don't talk very much. More likely to nod or use simple signals.

Ignore the naive people who thought the Ghost voice in the Destiny alpha was going to be the one they put into the final game. Ignore the Hayterfans who carry grudges. It's going to be fine.

..as long as we get KieferSnake tackling a christmas-tree for an easter-egg.

The "Keifer was too expensive" argument doesn't really work when there's a ton of VA in tapes and he did all the mocap. Also someone mentioned MG1+2 and Kojima pretty much admitted that this was going to retcon some stuff from other Metal Gear games, mostly from MG1+2 and MGS from the looks of it. I'm sure we'll find out why he's so quiet in the game, but it's pretty obvious it wasn't Keifer's expenses.

I dunno, for as much in-strides that were made when Kiefer was announced it kinda seems like it'd all be for nothing if he barely speaks. Alot of MGS fans would have been okay with Richard Doyle getting the call, because the older Big Boss gets the further away from Hayter's voice he should get as well. So, Kiefer being Big Boss is actually okay because I view Hayter as Solid Snake all the way, with him voicing a young Big Boss out of convenience that fits with the narrative. So, if Kiefer had been voicing Solid Snake that would have been where I'd be pissed.

But, man they made a big deal about it. And they didn't handle the David Hayter situation well. Like, at all. He's been the leading man for a long time, they needed to handle that better.

And if in the end, it winds being that all that bullshit, and missteps, and it was ultimately for what Jeff said seemed like a silent protagonist, then what the fuck? They could have saved themselves months of bitching and in-fighting with their fanbase if that's the end result. We have to wait and see, but man it'd be ridiculous if it winds up being the case.

BECAUSE IT'S REALLY DAVID HAYTER VOICING SNAKE.

Someone had to say it...

Because Kojima is a crazy cinephile who's obsessed with western action stars. He probably just wanted a chance to work with Keifer Sutherland.

Also because there is mo cap acting in this game like you see in Uncharted and similar games.

Kiefer Sutherland did zero mocap for The Phantom Pain. He was brought in specifically for the facial capture.

I believe the motion capture artist for Snake is named Erik Brown.

EDIT: I completely blanked on the second line. Muh bad.

@subliminalkitteh said:

Exactly. Ground Zeroes has actually a surprising amount of Kiefer lines hidden in the briefing tapes. They're also acted a bit differently and Sutherland doesn't slur lines, unlike in the cutscenes - this is probably because they record the VO alongside the mo-cap/facial capture, like GTA V did, while the tapes were made in a booth.

I think it's simply an artistic decision, as the game moved on from Codec conversations, which served as the bulk of the talky parts in MGS. Hayter isn't that talkative in the cutscenes of MGS3 and MGS4 either, to be honest - not to the same extent as Big Boss in GZ and TPP apparently is, but rewatch some of the non-Codec or non-motion comic scenes.

Besides, people talking about Kiefer Sutherland's cash demands overestimate his star power - dude hasn't been an A-lister for a long time now, with his biggest artistic and financial success in the past few years being the 24 revival. It's not a slight against him in any way, he's just not THAT big. Definitely not as big as Ellen Page, and I would argue that not even Willem Dafoe, who had roles in 5 major critical and/or financial darlings of 2014 (John Wick, Grand Budapest Hotel, A Most Wanted Man, Nymphomaniac, The Fault in Our Stars). If they can be in for a full game, so can Kiefer Sutherland.

Besides, I'm having a hard time believing this theory for another reason - dude is Ishmael in TPP and was most likely doing the medic in Ground Zeroes. I doubt he's doing triple duty because KojiPro didn't have money to hire two additional actors for those characters because Sutherland bloated their budget.

Hayter's tweets pre and post-GDC 2014 (all the stuff about laryngitis and New Coke), Sutherland saying that there's a cool twist with the voice change etc. make me think that they are simply going to have Hayter as Snake in the game. It's probably going to be a brief moment - I dunno, it could be the signature post-credits dialogue (Sutherland: What's your name, soldier? Hayter: David, sir.), preceeded by an MGS4-style "David Hayter as SOLID SNAKE". It would serve as an excellent bookend to the series, with both the last Big Boss game and last Solid Snake one ending with a conversation between father and son.

I mean, let's remember that Kojima likes his meta-casting choices. In MGS3, he switched the action scene motion capture actor with the dramatic one on purpose, so he could have little touches like Big Boss flinching when EVA leans in for a kiss come off as more natural. In the Japanese version of MGS4, he hired Chikao Ohtsuka, the father of Akio, to play Big Boss in the final scene - and if I recall correctly, the two had a falling out a few years back and weren't on speaking terms, giving that entire ending sequence some extra context.

Sure, there's the possibility that it's a hoax, but unlike all the head transplant//Big Boss is Decoy Octopus/Paz has a sex change and becomes Psycho Mantis/Chico is Quiet stuff (although I'm actually hoping that last one is true), this theory has some grounding in Kojima's previous artistic decisions.

@hewitt: Why because BB is also has facial capture and acting as well. Kiefers performance isn't just vocal its physical as well.

They realised "Oh Crap we kicked out the right voice of Snake....this doesn't sound right..." but it was too late, bridges had been burnt and Kiefer was already paid for.

Then decided to go for minimalist writing so as not to emphasise the difference and play it down.

I should point out again just to help clear up the confusion, Kiefer Sutherland is not doing any motion capture in this game. He was brought on for his face and his voice.

Kojima has said that his favorite film is "Mad Max 2". In that movie, Mel Gibson has something like 10 lines. He really just doesn't speak. There was an interview with him and Keighley a few years back where he remarked on wanting to tell a similar story. This makes sense to me, because Max spoke more and had a different demeanor in the first Mad Max film. By the second one, he'd experienced pretty traumatic loss, and watched the world go to shit around him. It's a pretty similar character arc to Big Boss.

I'm sure Keifer's time really is quite expensive. But, considering the scale of The Phantom Pain, I'd be seriously surprised if Kojima was willing to sacrifice Snake's dialogue purely based on the cost of the talent.

@chronicthehedgehog: Keifer did all the facial capture for Big Boss. So he was there regardless of whether he was talking or not.

I've been wondering how this process worked. He would have had to do the facial mo-cap for all of his delivered dialogue. But, what about scenes were he isn't speaking? Did they have a camera on him to capture his performance for every cutscene? Part of me thinks, that there has to be some of this that was recycled.

Snake without a voice will be jarring as all hell. In an interview with IGN Kojima's reason for Snake having a low speaking role was that he wanted Snake to be more of an avatar for the player but to me that's a poor excuse as that just doesn't make sense for a character who is predefined and has so much depth and past with the players experiencing his story themselves. No the real reason here is Kojima had no idea how much Kiefer Sutherland would cost and Konami was at that point where they just didn't want to foot the bill anymore.

@cold_wolven: It's like people don't want to accept that it's just a creative choice that was made. You don't have to like it. People didn't like that Snake was old in MGS4, or that you played as Raiden in MGS2. It's just the way Kojima is. He never consistently does what people say they want.

Hard to say; it could be. The PC version of Ground Zeroes revealed, through camera hacks, that there's plenty going around in some of that game's more crowded cutscenes, like the one on the helicopter, that the player doesn't see or sees barely a glimpse in the corner.

I mean, we're talking about a series that painstakingly researches and then implements shit like proper climbing technique or puts in realistically melting ice in MGS2 for a throwaway gag that most people won't even stumble upon.

And then in the end it turns out David is really doing the voice work, Kojima leaving Konami was faked as a publicity stunt, last half of the game is a remake of the original Metal Gear and after the credits is a teaser for the Metal Gear Solid movie.

Hell yeah I do!

@dudeglove: The "parrot exposition" of MGS always kinda annoyed me, but I have to say - if Kiefer Sutherland never asks "METAL GEAR?!" in the most incredulous voice he can manage, I'm going to fucking war over this.

Us discussing, "why Kiefer voice isn't in the game is the exact type of conversation Konami and Kojima want to drum up for this game." It's like next level Inception shit.

*cue in gong sound*

They should've just kept David Hayter if Sutherland is too expensive to have a lot of lines. How much of the budget was spent on Sutherland?

My theory on why Big Boss is so quiet all the time is that after Ground Zeroes he is mad, really really mad, at everyone. And do you want to talk to people you hate? People you despise? No, but Big Boss needs them to rebuild everything, to rebuild Mother Base. So in the end he will somehow betray every single person who cares about him cause he feels they failed him in letting their base getting destroyed.

Well, in some of the earliest footage they showed, the bandaged-face guy was clearly voiced by Kiefer despite the player character being Snake. They might be having him stay quiet so it's less obvious that they have the same voice for whatever twist the plot's going to have about that.

My theory is that Hayter will definitely be in the game somehow and was just having fun goading people along on twitter. There's no way he would be such a big baby about it. The thing is, Big Boss wasn't even voiced by Hayter in MGS4... so I don't necessarily see why it has to be Hayter anyway. Also (I think I'm in the minority on this one) but I hope Big Boss has more to say in the release version because I think Sutherland is perfect for the role and sounds great as him.

I wonder if they'll front-load whatever dialog he has into mission briefings? I actually quite like when games do that. The Last of Us had a definite structure of gameplay and story being deliberately separate. Also, as a guy that's just listened to Paz's diaries for the first time, erm... did that one about Strangelove's sun tan lotion have to be so 50 Shades of Fan Fiction?

In MGS3, Portable Ops, and Peace Walker Big Boss was voiced by David Hayter. This is the continuation of that story. Having Hayter play Solid Snake and Big Boss in MGS4 would've made for a pretty baffling (and not in the usual way) scene of the same voice talking for both characters. That's why Hayter wasn't Big Boss in MGS4.

Also given that Snake killed Big Boss and then he was brought back to life through science-magic, having his voice not be the same made sense from that perspective as well.

Whatever's going on with the voice of Big Boss- I trust Kojima Productions. These games are always awesome. They know exactly what they're doing. This game, and this issue of the voice actor, will be no exception.

I always thought after hearing all the "he doesn't talk much" talk, I figured maybe they didn't want to showcase him talking prior to release. Sutherland is a huge name and maybe they wanted people to be surprised? I don't know, it's a stretch. He didn't talk much in Peace Walker I assumed because of the limitations of the UMD on PSP.

As much as I know it won't happen, I'd love for it to be Kiefer in the beginning, Snake clears his throat, and it is Hayter again.

As I have said before, there is no way that Kiefer Sutherland was "too expensive" to do a lot of voice work. They mo-capped his damn face, which is incredibly labor intensive and time consuming since they needed subtle reactions for a variety of cutscenes, and they've already mentioned (multiple times, I might add) that there is a lot of voice work done in the tapes that you can find.

Given the volume of trailers and material put out, I think this game is going to have a similar amount of story breaks as MGS2 or 3 but spread out more since this game is open world, along with a raft of Peace Walker style backstory tapes for you to collect.

I would be surprised if there isn't a good, in-universe reason for lacking voice work during gameplay, and that's assuming Big Boss isn't very talkative past the point that Jeff saw.

All I know is that I'm joining Hideo's PMC. First in line.

Big Boss being a stoic near-mute is both lore-breaking and logic-breaking. Either there's something fishy going on in the plot, or Sutherland was too expensive. I can't see any other explanation.

Question?

@itwastuesday said:

I secretly want this to be the case too but I'm not holding out hope. The Japanese voice of Snake, Akio Ōtsuka, has stayed the same. So any bait and switch on the voice cast won't be in the Japanese version at least.

Huh, according to his wiki Akio Otsuka voiced both Solid and Solidus in the Japanese MGS2. Weird. So maybe he could play two Snakes...

It's a good thing that Hayter didn't voice Big Boss at the end of MGS4 or else he and Snake would have gotten stuck in an infinite loop.

"And all will go back to zero."
"To zero?"
"Zero?"
"To zero?"
"To zero? Huh"
"Huh. Zero"

I just think that having Keifer Sutherland doesnt really add that much to the game. He is also probably pretty expensive as a voice actor which explains why he will speak lot less in this game than David Hayter did in other Metal Gear Solid games.

Wondering how much of that estimated 80 million dollar budget was spent on hiring Keifer Sutherland. For me a big reason for playing Metal Gear Solid games was hearing the main character talk. Hopefully I am mistaken and Keifer Sutherland actually has more spoken dialogue than what has been hinted at.

I'm putting my money on Hayter being in the game as a young Solid Snake. Maybe some gameplay segments jump into the far future of mid-90's when Snake was in his twenties. Or if we were to keep up with the theme, maybe Big Boss goes to see baby Snake and we find out he was born with that gruff voice and pack of cigs.