20 Things You Didn't Know About Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
Happy five years to Kojima's flawed masterpiece.
Believe it or not, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain has just celebrated its five-year anniversary.
Released in the early(ish) days of the PlayStation 4 a whole seven years after the last mainline game, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, it can't be understated just how avidly anticipated the fifth game was by fans.
And though it released to predictably ecstatic reviews from the mainstream press, there was considerable backlash from fans over the game's blatantly unfinished state, not to mention the unconvincing and abrupt nature of its biggest late-game revelation.
Much has been written about writer-director Hideo Kojima's acrimonious relationship with Konami during MGS V's strained development, but what about those lesser-known - and less-miserable - tidbits and anecdotes surrounding the game's creation?
With the dust well and truly settled in the five years since its release, fans can now appreciate MGS V for the mechanically sublime, narratively flawed experience it is, while these fascinating factoids confirm just how colossal of an undertaking the game truly was.
20. Kiefer Sutherland Has Just 22 Minutes Of Dialogue In The Game
Kiefer Sutherland's casting as Big Boss proved hugely divisive with fans, who were of course expecting regular Solid Snake/Big Boss voice actor David Hayter to return.
Hideo Kojima's recast rationale was that he wanted an actor who could perform a full range of performance beyond voice acting, and so opted for a card-carrying Hollywood star instead.
Curiously, though, despite being by far the most prominent actor in the game, Sutherland actually has the least lines of any of the game's major characters, save only for the mostly-mute Quiet (Stefanie Joosten).
All in all, Sutherland's recorded lines in the final game amount to just 22 minutes of spoken dialogue, which is obviously a far cry from Hayter's more extensive, wordy work in the previous games.
Sutherland certainly did a great job with what little he had, but fans were understandably desperate to hear a little more from Venom Snake.