I usually avoid the Internet on April Fool’s Day. On this day you get a broad spectrum of lies, from the humorous and obvious, to the lame and overused. Then there are those ones that fall in between. You can’t quite be sure if you are being trolled or not. A day like today is a prime time for one of gaming’s biggest trolls to put the next phase of his plan into action. All eyes are on you Kojima, and I for one have my skeptical eyes on.
Actually, that’s not entirely true. Today, all eyes seem to be on David Hayter, the man behind the iconic growl of Solid Snake since he was first given a voice in the original Metal Gear Solid. He released a tweet on TwitLonger explaining the situation behind Metal Gear Solid V and why he is not going to be the voice for this outing. Aside from the very obvious scrutiny that this is under for being put into the open on April 1st, I have a few other reasons that I think this is all a lie and a furthering of the troll that began long before we ever saw the trailer for The Phantom Pain.
Hayter’s Possible Misdirection
Hayter’s tweet is titled METAL GEAR V and then references MG: V. Nowhere is Metal Gear Solid V ever mentioned. Simple typo, or purposeful misdirection? After going to the length to type out his TwitLonger reply and having been the voice of snake in all Metal Gear SOLID games, I am not inclined to believe that he would just call this Metal Gear V for no reason. Perhaps so that he can say this is no April Fool’s joke? He really isn’t going to be a part of Metal Gear V, as it doesn’t exist.
Hayter asked in a now-deleted tweet how you post longer things to Twitter. A mere four minutes later he sends the TwitLonger response, beautifully formatted and written, telling me that he had it pre-written up and ready to go and that it was not just a random tweet. If Kojima is in on all of this then the wording would have to be perfect and would have been written up beforehand for David to tweet. Could be a long shot, but can we really rule it out? I mean, the man did create an entirely fake game developer.
The Metal Gear Solid 4 Connection (Spoilers may follow)
All iterations of Solid Snake and Big Boss that have had voices have been voiced by David Hayter, except for one. In the epilogue of Metal Gear Solid 4, Snake and Big Boss appeared in the same game (with voice acting) for the first time. Not only the same game, but they appeared in the same scene and exchanged dialog with one another. Now, it would have been weird to have two David Hayters growling at each other, so they got Richard Doyle to play Big Boss opposite Hayter voicing Old Snake.
Where Metal Gear Solid V Fits In
As far as we are aware, Metal Gear Solid V is the missing link between the conclusion of Peace Walker and the beginning of Solid Snake’s story in the original Metal Gear. Speculation is hot that we will see the Les Enfants Terribles project play out, in which Solid and Liquid Snake are both cloned from Big Boss. Due to their rapid aging, it’s not too far fetched to expect that we may see a young adult, pre-Metal Gear Solid Snake make an appearance at some point in Metal Gear Solid V and Kojima wants to hide it.
If we indeed have both Big Boss and Solid Snake in the same game and both can’t be voiced by David Hayter, I would prefer to have Hayter be the voice behind Solid Snake rather than Big Boss. This leaves us with a different voice for Big Boss which was already set up for us with Richard Doyle taking up Big Boss’ mantle in MGS4. Aside from that appearance, this will be the oldest that we’ve ever seen Big Boss (with a voice) so it wouldn’t be like he’s getting a different voice in between iterations of Hayter doing his voice.
So why can’t Hayter say he’s voicing Snake? Again, Kojima likely wants to hide this aspect of the game, and by confirming Hayter as being in MGSV but having a clearly different voice for Big Boss, Kojima would find fans digging into things more than he would like. By denying all association, Hayter is helping to take a bit of the pressure off of Kojima. Remember that The Phantom Pain troll for Metal Gear Solid V was in the works for years. Kojima isn’t going to let us off that easy and Metal Gear Solid V is going to hold mysteries and secrets until the credits roll. Is David Hayter one of those secrets? Only time will tell, but I think it is much too early to rule David Hayter completely out of Metal Gear Solid V.
What do you think? What secrets does Kojima still have in store for MGSV? Are you tired of the constant back and forth every time a Metal Gear Solid game comes out? Are we all just reading into it too deeply? Let us know your thoughts and crazy theories on Metal Gear Solid V in the comments below.
