David Hayter’s brilliantly gruff voice has graced most of the Metal Gear Solid series. Outside of a Kiefer Sutherland-filled fifth game, Hayter has voiced the characters of Snake across most mainline entries and spin-offs, and even returned for this year’s Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater.

Following the original game in 1998, Hideo Kojima’s second game, Sons of Liberty, surprised everyone when the series protagonist was swapped from Solid Snake to newcomer Raiden. In 2001, this move was controversial and shocked not only every fan of the series, but also David Hayter himself.

Speaking to PC Gamer, Hayter explained that was taken aback that he wasn’t the protagonist of the game. Everything about the game had been pushed as a sequel to the first game with Snake plastered across every pre-release item relating to the game. As it turns out, even Hayter wasn’t aware that his iconic gruff character would be missing for most of the story.

“I was surprised as anybody that Snake wasn’t going to be the protagonist,” the actor told the outlet. “I found out in the booth while we were recording. And I’m like, ‘What the hell?’ And they were like, ‘No, no, it’s gonna be Raiden as the player character.’”

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty was extremely well received at the time, and deservedly so. However, it did prove controversial, and plenty of fans were upset at the lack of Solid Snake. While fans have cooled on Raiden in the years since, and now love him, there was a lot of backlash at the time, especially as some players felt duped by the game’s marketing.

“I was like: ‘Wow. Okay… well, we’ll see how people feel about that,’” Hayter recalled saying about Snake’s absence. “The game came out and was amazing, but there was understandable conversation about that.”

Hayter explained that Snake taking a backseat wasn’t too bad as players still got “an astounding game”. Additionally, fans were then treated to Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater just three years later which “really dialled down into what Snake is about, what Metal Gear is about”.

With a new generation of developers at Konami now trained in the art of working on Hideo Kojima’s iconic tactical espionage series, it seems that a new wave of Metal Gear Solid is about to start. Will we receive more remakes, or will we get a new, original story? Only time will tell.