Features & News

Keifer Sutherland is the new voice of Snake in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

June 7, 2013, Author: Olly Jones

Konami’s Pre-E3 show last night unveiled a new voice behind the eyepatch for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.

The star of 24 will also be shooting the motion capture for Snake, effectively acting out his role.

It’s through Hollywood producer Avi Arad that the casting came about. The producer suggested the idea to Kojima, who being Kojima, could not accept that his big brain didn’t think of it first.

During Konami’s presentation, Sutherland admitted that despite not being a gamer, he’d still heard about Metal Gear Solid.

Sutherland has voiced video-games before, acting in Call of Duty: World at War as Sgt. Roebuck and Tekken vs Street Fighter as Lars Alexandersson.

The movie world’s awareness for MGS is also probably due to the fact a Metal Gear Solid script’s been floating around Hollywood for the best part of a decade, one draft of which is by X-Men and Watchmen scribe (and former voice of Snake) David Hayter.

The reasoning behind replacing Hayter’s now iconic voice was addressed by Kojima in the presentation. The game takes place in 1984, when Snake is 49 years old. Kojima wanted a more subtle performance with a tone of someone in their late forties.

While it’s sad that Snake’s classic voice has been retired, let’s not try to Hayter on Kiefer too much…

Yes, That’s all very good, but Hayter is 44, not a huge leap from 49 (Sutherland is 46). Last time we saw Snake on a big console game he was an old man in MGS4.

What I can see of Kojima’s logic there is about as severely stretched as Fatman’s waistline (hur hur little MGS2 boss reference for you there).

That said, Kojima’s always wanted to get in bed with Hollywood and this looks to be another step towards that.

Arid is currently set to develop a Metal Gear Solid movie which hopefully won’t suck as bad as those Ghost Rider ones he produced.

Kojima states that as previous games were focused on ‘Genes’ and ‘Peace’, the overall theme of The Phantom Pain will be ‘Race’.

A subject he will no doubt approach and explore in his customarily sensitive manner through fighting giant walking tanks, scattering porn mags, encountering cyborg ninjas and funny pooing-themselves soldiers.

That said, Keifer Sutherland is a pretty solid (get it?) actor, in my mind. It will be interesting to see how MGSV takes shape. I think he’ll do a good job as Snake. What do you think?

A full version of Konami’s presentation can be seen below