David Hayter - Metal Gear Solid

In 1998, Hayter voiced protagonist Solid Snake in the highly successful video game Metal Gear Solid. He provided Snake's voice in later Metal Gear games such as Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes (which was a remake of Metal Gear Solid), and provided the voice for a closely related character, Naked Snake, a young Big Boss, in the prequels Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater and Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops. Most recently he has voiced Solid Snake (renamed Old Snake) in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots and Naked Snake in the PSP game Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. Also, he had a brief acting role in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots during one of the beginning commercial propaganda scenes, starring as himself in the alternate reality of the Metal Gear world. In the scene, he wears the "Solid Eye", the technologically advanced eye patch that Old Snake wears throughout the game. He is expected to continue the role of Big Boss in the upcoming game Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes.

Hayter also provided the voice of Solid Snake for the character's guest appearance in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, a Wii fighting game unrelated to the Metal Gear series. Hayter is one of the few Metal Gear Solid actors to date to have played and beaten the Metal Gear games he's voiced in, while co-star Christopher Randolph has only played Metal Gear Solid.

According to an interview with Paul Eiding, Hayter gave up half of his own paycheck in order to bring back the cast of Metal Gear Solid for the remake, The Twin Snakes. This is the reason why the voice acting in The Twin Snakes was almost completely redone with the same voice actors, one of the few differences being the actor for Gray Fox, Greg Eagles, who was replaced by Rob Paulsen.

An interview with David Hayter by Game Informer in 2001, showed that Hayter wished for the then-unconfirmed Metal Gear Solid movie to be animated or made in CGI, possibly so he could provide the voice of Solid Snake. He also wished to write the screenplay for the film, going so far as writing an unused treatment.

His work with Metal Gear Solid has also led Hayter to other video game voices, such as characters in Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, by Silicon Knights, who also developed Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes for the Nintendo GameCube. He also cited the Metal Gear series as an influence on his screenwriting, stating that "Kojima and I have different styles," "but I've certainly learned things from him, especially about ambiguity and telling a story without giving all the answers."