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Credit: Konami
Metal Gear Solid 5 came out (oh my god) 10 years ago, but it can still spark discourse like a game half its age. Did Konami mistreat Hideo Kojima? Did Kojima push his luck too far? Will we ever get Episode 51 (no)? Do we regret our words and deeds more than the regular amount? And can we ever forgive the way the series unceremoniously jettisoned David Hayter as Snake’s actor so Kojima could hang out with Kiefer Sutherland, who voiced MGS5’s Venom Snake?
Well, if it helps, Hayter himself has made peace with that last one. Back when MGS5 released, Hayter was—perhaps understandably—reluctant to give the game a go, describing the notion of playing it as “60 hours of humiliation” in an interview. But in a chat with PC Gamer to mark the upcoming release of Metal Gear Solid Delta, he said he’s finally given it a try, and you know what? It’s pretty good.
“Well, there was reluctance,” said Hayter. “I didn’t want to play the game because I figured it would hurt my feelings. Then, you know, 10 years went by and I was like, ‘Ah, to hell with my feelings. What do I care?’ … I’m a screenwriter, so I get fired for a living, like I literally, eventually, get fired from every single gig that I’ve got, and I’m not a child.”
“I was like, ‘Stop being a baby and play the game.’ So I played it. It’s amazing.”
Hayter says it gave him a new perspective on a few fan interactions over the years. “I would ask fans, ‘What’s your favourite Metal Gear?’ And if they said Metal Gear Solid 5 I’d be like, ‘What the hell, dude? Like, you know, thanks. Do you wanna give me a paper cut as well? Maybe pour some lemon juice on it?’ And then I played it and I’m like, ‘I think this is my favourite gameplay of the series.’
Now he has to play it again with the co-op mod. | Credit: Konami, modded by unknown321
“The fact that you can go into the same scenario each time, and the [enemy] soldier’s gonna be doing the same thing, but you can take on different routes or different strategies of attack, makes it feel like time travel… So, yes, that was badass. So far as I’m concerned, all is forgiven.”
Apparently, Hayter even bumped into his substitute at one point. “I ran into Kiefer Sutherland at a bar in Dallas,” he recalls, ” and we had a bunch of drinks. And he’s a great guy, you know? No, no ill will. All is forgiven.”
Of course, the bitter pill of MGS5 has probably been made a lot easier to swallow by recent events. After he was iced out of MGS5, Konami has gone all-in on bringing Hayter back as the public face of the Metal Gear series, pulling the old killer out to do some wetwork as it dips its toes back into the MGS series in a post-Kojima world, with projects like the Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol 1 (it’s good now!) and the upcoming MGS Delta, a remake of Metal Gear Solid 3.
Want to hear more about that? Great timing. PCG’s latest magazine has a humungo-feature on the game, with all the goss from Konami’s Noriaki Okamura, Yuji Korekado, and, yep, David Hayter.