James Bond And Limited Gaming Tech Shaped Snake's Personality In Metal Gear Solid

Metal Gear's grim and competent special ops protagonist Solid Snake was only grim and quiet thanks to strict tech limitations restricting what his creator, Hideo Kojima, could do with him. Kojima made the comments in a recent interview with Japanese magazine An-An (which Automaton translated) and said the severe hardware restrictions of the MSX2, which Metal Gear first released on, meant he couldn't get too ambitious with his new creation's emotional profile."It was 1986 when I entered the game industry," Kojima said. "Games still couldn’t speak. Characters did not have voices. Kanji fonts weren’t supported, and you could only show one katakana character at a time. Solid Snake, the protagonist of my debut title Metal Gear (1987), was born as a silent ‘tough guy’ because of these circumstances."Those circumstances had changed by the time Kojima and Konami developed Metal Gear Solid in 1998, when Snake had a voice actor and more things to say. However, by that point, Kojima had made Solid Snake's stoic gruffness part of the character's personality. He said he envisioned Snake as a character similar to James Bond or Lupin the Third, delivering "snappy lines" when the situation called for them. Kojima also said he attributed much of the character's popularity to David Hayter's voice work in the English version and Akio Otsuka's in the Japanese release.Continue Reading at GameSpot

Apr 8, 2025 - 20:32

James Bond And Limited Gaming Tech Shaped Snake's Personality In Metal Gear Solid

Metal Gear's grim and competent special ops protagonist Solid Snake was only grim and quiet thanks to strict tech limitations restricting what his creator, Hideo Kojima, could do with him. Kojima made the comments in a recent interview with Japanese magazine An-An (which Automaton translated) and said the severe hardware restrictions of the MSX2, which Metal Gear first released on, meant he couldn't get too ambitious with his new creation's emotional profile.

"It was 1986 when I entered the game industry," Kojima said. "Games still couldn’t speak. Characters did not have voices. Kanji fonts weren’t supported, and you could only show one katakana character at a time. Solid Snake, the protagonist of my debut title Metal Gear (1987), was born as a silent ‘tough guy’ because of these circumstances."

Those circumstances had changed by the time Kojima and Konami developed Metal Gear Solid in 1998, when Snake had a voice actor and more things to say. However, by that point, Kojima had made Solid Snake's stoic gruffness part of the character's personality. He said he envisioned Snake as a character similar to James Bond or Lupin the Third, delivering "snappy lines" when the situation called for them. Kojima also said he attributed much of the character's popularity to David Hayter's voice work in the English version and Akio Otsuka's in the Japanese release.Continue Reading at GameSpot