Hideo Kojima replacing David Hayter with Kiefer Sutherland as Snake in Metal Gear Solid V will surely go down as one of the great injustices of our time.
Fortunately Hayter – the original and best Snake to many – has remained in our hearts and minds as the definitive voice of a PlayStation icon, so it’s heartwarming to see him return to the role… sort of.
Konami Hayter’s first unconventional return to Snake this year was in Super Smash Bros Ultimate, in which the character is of course a playable fighter, beating the snot out of Mario, Link, Kirby and the gang.
Perhaps even more bizzarre however, is the fact that Hayter appeared alongside Liquid Snake actor Cam Clarke to record a reading of a Metal Gear Solid themed take on The Night Before Christmas – cunningly called The Night Before Metal Gear.
It is, as I’m sure you can imagine, utterly mental. There are some gold lines in there though, such as “Otacon spoke not a word, but went straight to his work. He unleashed the Mk. II, turned it loose on those jerks.”
Enough out of me though – check it out below:
According to Clarke’s Facebook post, Hayter actually wrote the whole thing himself in about 20 minutes, proving that he really does have a genuine love and understanding of Solid Snake and the Metal Gear franchise.
You wouldn’t catch Kiefer Sutherland doing this, that’s all I’m saying.
In other, equally strange Metal Gear news, rapper Kanye West recently embarked on a quest to track down series creator Hideo Kojima, for reasons currently known only to West himself.
Heard Hideo Kojima is in NY We need to meet Does anyone know where he is or how to contact him
— ye (@kanyewest) December 14, 2018
Maybe he saw Hayter and Clarke’s festive video and decided it was time to collab with Kojima on the next Christmas number one? All things are possible at this time of year.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.