I mean, this is getting to be Old Man Big Boss. Ground Zeroes looks to take place in the late 70's to early 80's, and his age is starting to show. Not just Big Boss, but Hayter as well. There were a couple of times during MGS4 where on some cuts it seemed like he almost lost the voice entirely. Should we get a new gravelly man to voice Big Boss (especially considering Big Boss is now being modeled more on his MGS4 appearance and not Solid Snake), or do you think KojiPro should keep using Hayter until the series is dead?

I'm honestly kinda torn on the issue. On the one hand, Hayter's voice is synonymous with the character. On the other, I'd like to hear an older, more mature voice on the role. You know, considering Big Boss is going to be anywhere from his mid-to-late 40's in Ground Zeroes.

The point where Solid Snake is an adult.

@Jaytow said:

The point where Solid Snake is an adult.

This. Then, they bring in the dude who did him in MGS4. Until then, I see no reason for David Hayter not to.

I think Hayter gave the impression he's losing the voice only because he really had to force it portraying Snake as an old man.

I think they should stick with David Hayter, he's simply too synonymous at this point. Richard Doyle's voice is way too old to pull it off and I don't want them to pull off a Sam Fisher.

Well, David Hayter himself is in his 40s, so no?

I think it'd be awesome if they brought back Richard Doyle, lightened his voice up a bit, and had him carry (or in a way return to) the mantel of Big Boss for this new game, and then right into MGS5 which is the time where we hopefully have MG and MG2 adapted into a next-gen game. But I'm pretty sure it's still going to be David Hayter.

Well I can't really imagine anyone else than David Hayter saying "KEPT YOU WAITING HUHH?" when I see that trailer so not in this game at least.

@Jack268 said:

Well I can't really imagine anyone else than David Hayter saying "KEPT YOU WAITING HUHH?" when I see that trailer so not in this game at least.

Nolan North?

Seriously Hayter is Snake. He should just do the peacewalker voice or the MGS2 snake voice until Solid Snake is old enough to be in a game.

Hayter is Snake/Big Boss....I can't even imagine someone else voicing the character at this point...I liken it to someone else other than Johnny Depp playing Capt. Jack Sparrow or Robert Downey Jr not being Tony Stark...it just won't work imo

@ThePaleKing said:

Well, David Hayter himself is in his 40s, so no?

The thing about Hayter's Snake voice is that it doesn't sound like a real person. Don't get me wrong, it's awesome, but the amount of gravel and venom he spits his lines with is just comic book in nature. Again, not a bad thing for Solid Snake who is himself a riff on 80's action heroes, but Big Boss feels different. Especially with his new look.

@Ghostiet said:

I think Hayter gave the impression he's losing the voice only because he really had to force it portraying Snake as an old man.

I think they should stick with David Hayter, he's simply too synonymous at this point. Richard Doyle's voice is way too old to pull it off and I don't want them to pull off a Sam Fisher.

That's a fair point, and something I considered after playing through Peace Walker in the last week. Even during PW though, I wasn't entirely convinced by Hayter's performance. Especially during key bits where Big Boss delivers "profound" dialogue that needs to have real weight to it.

On the whole, I'm not sure if I want Richard Doyle voicing Big Boss, either. I'm hoping though, that with Ground Zeroes Big Boss stops being Snake and starts being the mythical mercenary bad ass we keep hearing about.

Hayter, always.

Hayter, always.

@Bobby_The_Great said:

@Gruff182 said:

Hayter, always.

Yep.

Agreed.

Since I have the feeling this will end up having that Snake/Liquid creation cameo, they probably wont be in the same room or talk to each other, ever. Since they'd have to change the VA for either one of them (althought double the Hayter is fine by me,) I think Hayter should stay the voice of Naked/Solid Snake.

I would like David Hayter again, but only if he cuts back on it a bit. MGS4 was too much. Yeah, I know he's old but holy shit David. I could just see him in that booth trying way too hard on some of those lines. Really wasn't necessary. It brought me out of it whenever I would hear a ridiculously grumbled word. It got to that point of caricature.

At this point I wouldn't mind seeing a new character.

David Hayter is the only Snake.

I'd only accept a replacement if David Hayter somehow ended up dead.

He's a voice actor...

I'm sure he can handle it.

/thread

@dezvous said:

I would like David Hayter again, but only if he cuts back on it a bit. MGS4 was too much. Yeah, I know he's old but holy shit David. I could just see him in that booth trying way too hard on some of those lines. Really wasn't necessary. It brought me out of it whenever I would hear a ridiculously grumbled word. It got to that point of caricature.

It's not that he was doing an "over the top old person voice", he was doing a "You are in your late 30's yet you look 60 because your cells are deteriorating and your body will fall apart in six months" voice.

Also, Ground Zeroes is apparently 10 days after Peace Walker, so I can't imagine why his voice would change. His appearance change doesn't even make sense. But he does look badass.

I share the sentiment that his voice stays the same until Solid Snake enters the picture. Personally, I wouldn't mind if they just kept his voice and changed the mannerisms if Solid Snake were to share a scene. They are clones, after all.

Now that they've made the split, I think they should stick to it.  Honestly, I think Naked Snake never should have had the same voice actor to begin with.
 
Which reminds me.  The main character in Ground Zeroes is now Old Naked Snake.  Ew.

Anyone but Hayter would be a travesty.changing the actor would be the same thing as someone else as darth vader or somone else as homer simpson.those voices are those characters. anybody else doing it barring a tragedy such as death is un acceptable.

The only time when Hayter should not be voicing Snake is if both Snake and Big Boss are in the same game and Snake is not an adult.

There were a couple of times during MGS4 where on some cuts it seemed like he almost lost the voice entirely.

@N7: That still doesn't make some of his performance any better. I think David Hayter does pretty much great work across the board with MGS but 4 has a handful of spots that are just ridiculous. Instead of acting, instead of sounding like Solid Snake, it sounds like David Hayter trying too hard. That brings me out of the experience. That's all I'm saying. I would all of a sudden get this flash in my mind of David in the booth just overdoing it.

I hope there is a part in the game where Big Boss has a tragic accident where he loses his voice and has to have surgery to fix it. That way they can change his voice from David Hater's Big Boss to Richard Doyle's mgs4 Big Boss. I'd literally lol if this happened.

@ComradeKhan said:

@Oldirtybearon said:

There were a couple of times during MGS4 where on some cuts it seemed like he almost lost the voice entirely.

That's because David Hayter is a voice actor... key word being ACTOR... he wasn't really losing his voice, it was acting. He was trying to portray snake as an old man, and apparently he did a damn good job because he tricked you into thinking that he actually was old and losing his voice... It was a performance.

That's... not how it works, though.

His voice performance wasn't believable in MGS4. It felt forced and stiff. When I'm thinking "Damn Hayter, you're losing your voice" it doesn't make me connect with how tired and grumpy Old Snake is, it just makes me think Hayter's finally ruining his vocal cords.

They should get David Hayter, Steve Blum, John Dimaggio, Fred Tatasciore, Rip Torn, and the guy who voiced the doorway to the Cave of Wonders in Aladdin to all record the lines, and then just play them all at once when Snake is talking. If you're gonna go gravelly, go all the fucking way.

@Sploder said:

They should get David Hayter, Steve Blum, John Dimaggio, Fred Tatasciore, Rip Torn, and the guy who voiced the doorway to the Cave of Wonders in Aladdin to all record the lines, and then just play them all at once when Snake is talking. If you're gonna go gravelly, go all the fucking way.

While we're at it, lets mix in some Elias Toufexis, Jason Cottle and Jackie Earle Haley! Have ourselves a big ole smoothie made up of nothing but different kinds of gravel.

@Sploder said:

They should get David Hayter, Steve Blum, John Dimaggio, Fred Tatasciore, Rip Torn, and the guy who voiced the doorway to the Cave of Wonders in Aladdin to all record the lines, and then just play them all at once when Snake is talking. If you're gonna go gravelly, go all the fucking way.

While we're at it, lets mix in some Elias Toufexis, Jason Cottle and Jackie Earle Haley! Have ourselves a big ole smoothie made up of nothing but different kinds of gravel.

@N7 said:

@dezvous said:

I would like David Hayter again, but only if he cuts back on it a bit. MGS4 was too much. Yeah, I know he's old but holy shit David. I could just see him in that booth trying way too hard on some of those lines. Really wasn't necessary. It brought me out of it whenever I would hear a ridiculously grumbled word. It got to that point of caricature.

It's not that he was doing an "over the top old person voice", he was doing a "You are in your late 30's yet you look 60 because your cells are deteriorating and your body will fall apart in six months" voice.

Also, Ground Zeroes is apparently 10 days after Peace Walker, so I can't imagine why his voice would change. His appearance change doesn't even make sense. But he does look badass.

I share the sentiment that his voice stays the same until Solid Snake enters the picture. Personally, I wouldn't mind if they just kept his voice and changed the mannerisms if Solid Snake were to share a scene. They are clones, after all.

Clones they may be, but Liquid and Solidus had their own unique voice actors as well, so I kinda agree with @Spoonman671 that Naked Snake should have been given a different voice actor from the start to differentiate them. Also wasn't Solidus the closest of the three to being a complete clone of Big Boss?

Never.

I used to really like Snake's voice, but with the advent of high quality actors doing voiceover work, it just seems amateurish now. At the same time, it's too late to change it without a massive backlash. It's become part of the whole image of the series.

David Hayter or Richard Doyle works for me.

The voice kind of is the character for me, i never picked up on mgs4 snake sounding off or forced and thought it was more for the part since he was old snake, and hayters voice probably still totally works for the character pretty much w/e his age is for me.

If they're gunna get a new voice actor for a leading role for a mgs game it may as well be a completely new character.

Never! David Hayter is Solid Snake and THE GUYVER!

What's Michael Ironside up to these days?

>_<

Changing Snake/Big Boss' voice so late in the series would be really weird, also I can't see anyone else but David Hayter doing his voice.

I'll never hear a better "Metal Gear?!!" so Hayter forever.

@N7 said:

Also, Ground Zeroes is apparently 10 days after Peace Walker,

Actually, Miller only says he got word about Paz's survival 10 days ago. It sounds unlikely he'd get a message about that the same day.

@Jack268 said:

@N7 said:

Also, Ground Zeroes is apparently 10 days after Peace Walker,

Actually, Miller only says he got word about Paz's survival 10 days ago. It sounds unlikely he'd get a message about that the same day.

I'm guessing since Chico was 12 in Peace Walker, and in the animal cage he looks around 17-19, that that we're at least looking at a several year gap.

Michael Ironside? Not like his schedule has been filled with Splinter Cell sound booth sessions.

Guard: "Who are you?"

Big Boss: "I'm the good guy who's here to save the world."

Guard: "I thought I was the good guy."

Big Boss: "No, no. You're the guy on the side with the super secret underground base. I'm the guy breaking into the base. So, that makes me the good guy."

@Yummylee said:

@Sploder said:

They should get David Hayter, Steve Blum, John Dimaggio, Fred Tatasciore, Rip Torn, and the guy who voiced the doorway to the Cave of Wonders in Aladdin to all record the lines, and then just play them all at once when Snake is talking. If you're gonna go gravelly, go all the fucking way.

While we're at it, lets mix in some Elias Toufexis, Jason Cottle and Jackie Earle Haley! Have ourselves a big ole smoothie made up of nothing but different kinds of gravel.

And if the budget allows it, hire Christian Bale and make him do his Batman voice.

I think the better question is how many more games are going to have Big Boss in them? I get the impression that the MGS universe is tiny and only like 10 people matter.

Never.

I don't, aren't they the same age in this anyway?

Not at all. That would never happen anyway, imagine the outrage if it did.

Hayter is my favorite voice actor, you don't mess with perfection, he stays

@JasonR86 said:

I think the better question is how many more games are going to have Big Boss in them? I get the impression that the MGS universe is tiny and only like 10 people matter.

It's the Star Wars Syndrome all over again.

Here's this rich and elaborate universe, full of interesting ideas and concepts and potential. Let's focus on these five people and tell the same stories ad nauseum.

@cannonballBAM: Agreed again.

I should look this up but did Akio Ōtsuka - Snake's Japanese voice actor - voice Big Boss in the trailer? If that is any indication. I'm split 50/50 between David Hayter and Richard Doyle.