Jennifer Hale and David Hayter are two of gaming's most recognizable voices, a pair whose combined credits include lead roles in Metal Gear Solid, Metroid Prime, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Overwatch, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and the list goes on, and on, and on. Which is to say: when these two industry titans join forces, as they are for the upcoming PSVR 2 game Synapse, you know to pay attention.
The first thing that strikes me as I sit down to chat with Hale and Hayter – other than the fact that I'm hearing the voices of Solid Snake, Commander Shepard, and so many other characters I've loved since childhood – is the mutual respect between the pair. They aren't just frequent co-workers, they're dear friends, admirers of each other, and mentor and mentee all at once.
That explains the look of genuine astonishment on Hale's face as Hayter reminisces on his breakthrough TV role and how it saved his life in the most literal sense. Hayter played Captain America and other roles in the Spider-Man animated series that ran from 1994 to 1998, and if it weren't for the health insurance the job provided him, he wouldn't have been able to afford an expensive and essential surgery.
"I had to have a bowel resection," Hayter explains. "I was 24 years old and they had to do surgery on me and take a part of my intestine out or I would've died. And the reason I'm saying this is because those jobs on Spider-Man got me health insurance for the first time since I moved to America, and it saved me $75,000 in surgical costs which probably would've fallen on my parents. So, Spider-Man literally saved my life and kicked off my professional career."
"Those jobs on Spider-Man got me health insurance for the first time since I moved to America, and it saved me $75,000 in surgical costs which probably would've fallen on my parents. So, Spider-Man literally saved my life and kicked off my professional career."
As both Hale and I grasp for words, Hayter deftly transitions into the impact of Spider-Man on his career. Hale played Felicia Hardy on the show, and Hayter credits her performance and support as foundational to his own success in the industry.
"Jennifer Hale taught me what a true professional voiceover actor is," says Hayter. "And we're very close friends, but she was really my mentor, and in a lot of ways I owe a huge amount of my career and understanding of this business to her."
"One of my great joys in life is opening doors for people, 100%, and it's my jam," says Hale. "But I can't walk you through the door. I can just go, 'look, there's a door, they opened it'. You're the one who walked through and booked all that and did all that amazing work."
"Well, that's a bunch of nonsense," Hayter cuts in, laughing.
A door to another galaxy
Hale would later recommend Hayter for the lead male in the long-running MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic, a role that would secure consistent work for Hayter for many years to come.
Hayter says: "They were looking for a guy to do it, and so Star Wars asked Jennifer Hale. And Jennifer Hale said what about David Hayter? And they said, 'What do you think he'd do it?' And I was like, 'play a Jedi? Yeah, I would do that.' So it's my dearest dream. I care more about that than anything else in the world. My family is like way down on the list of things that I care about."
"So I signed on. Great job. And we've now been doing that game for 15 years. So, a couple times a year we record new planets, whatever. It's like the greatest job in the world. And again, I have Jennifer Hale to thank for it."
"I suggested Dave and literally, [voice director Will Beckman] looked like a little kid at Christmas," adds Hale. "He was like, 'Do you think he'd do it?' He was so excited. And I thought it was like a one or two time thing because Dave is so busy. He loves voice acting, so it's just this quick little thing. And now I'm like, 'Oops, I guess it was more than one or two.'"
A few years after Spider-Man, Hayter was sitting by his pool when he got a call on his Motorola StarTAC cellphone. It was from Hale, calling to offer him the role of Solid Snake in Metal Gear Solid. It was actually veteran voice director, Kris Zimmerman, who Hale says is "responsible for a significant little piece of the tone of pop culture," who cast Hayter as Snake, but Hale had requested she be the one to give him the good news.
Hale played the English voice of Naomi Hunter in Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, and Emma Emmerich in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. Looking back at the very beginning, she says she knew better than to expect any one game, even one as "extraordinarily brilliant" as Metal Gear Solid, to blow up and spawn such an enduring legacy. Hayter, on the contrary, says he knew the game would "do well," but didn't expect it to become the juggernaut that it has.
"The idea that we'd be talking about it 25 years later – I think it did nine games for it – and that I'd constantly be at Comic Cons doing the Snake voice for hundreds upon hundreds of people," says Hayter. "I did not expect that. So it was all a very pleasant surprise."
Wait, 2014 was how long ago?!
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While both Hale and Hayter continue being two of the most prolific voice actors in video games, they've both had to adapt as both technology and the gaming industry more broadly evolve.
"There's been a ton of changes in the world," says Hale. "And they are reflected in the industry that I've seen. I mean, I remember, Dragon Age came to me several, several years ago and asked me to play a trans character. And I was really honored. And I felt a lot of the weight of that to do that justice. And I did an enormous amount of research and really dove in with a very open mind and a heavy conscience just to get that as right as I possibly could."
Hale voiced Krem in 2014's Dragon Age: Inquisition, a role that garnered widespread acclaim at launch. In the nine years since, a growing movement calling for greater representation in video games would likely reject the notion of a cisgendered person taking the role of a transgender person. Hale understands this well and still sees plenty of opportunity in the modern landscape to take on roles that aren't necessarily in her comfort zone.
"I will never do that again," says Hale. "I mean, I'm honored to have done it. And I will not do it again, because I am not that person. And that's how casting works – dialects have gone from being an essential part of a voice actor's repertoire, to being a secondary piece just in the last couple of years. Because representation matters and authenticity matters. And there are so many wonderfully talented people out there who are that person."
"I feel like I was always the hero when I was a kid... And Snake is such an iconic hero that now I'm in that phase of my career where you [the player] can be the hero, you can come in and go toe to toe with me."
Stepping into the present, Hayter and Hale are starring as Colonel Peter Conrad and Handler Clara Sorensen for nDreams' new PSVR 2 action game Synapse. Hayter previously worked with nDreams when he voiced the lead antagonist in the 2020 Oculus Quest game Phantom: Covert Ops. Now he's trying his hand at being the villain once again, playing a nefarious former black ops leader turned deranged mastermind of a global attack that could bring on the end of humanity. Naturally, it's your job as the player to stop him.
"I feel like I was always the hero when I was a kid," says Hayter. "And Snake is such an iconic hero that now I'm in that phase of my career where you [the player] can be the hero, you can come in and go toe to toe with me. And nDreams has given me the chance to do that twice. And the first experience was so good, and the game was so badass that when they approached me about it, they were like 'Would you do this?' And I was like, 'yep'."
Hayter also reckons fans of Metal Gear will find a lot to love, not just in his performance as the main boss, but also in the parallels between his character and Metal Gear's Big Boss.
"[My character] has gone legitimately insane," he adds. "And you have to go into his head, fight all of the military experience that he's going to throw at you and try to survive and so, in a way, it's kind of like stepping into Snake's head if he had gone completely insane. And you can go toe to toe. It's obviously not intended to be a Metal Gear game, but anybody that loves that franchise will get a taste of that."
"I really tried to tap into my inner Michael Keaton. Like, 'you want to get nuts. Come on, let's get nuts.' You know, like, that sort of thing. And so it was really more of Michael Keaton's influence on me that I tried to add into it, because I'm only now starting to play psychopaths. I'm not sure what that says about me, but…"
"... It means your cover is slipping," jokes Hale, a common and thoroughly entertaining theme throughout our chat.
Collision course
PlayStation has said Hale will be your "guiding voice" while you square up against Hayter, and it sounds like you'll be in good hands. "I love this character," Hale gushes. "She's super driven. She's super tight and precise, and just so goal oriented. It really feeds beautifully into the way the story unfolds in that things are maybe not what they seem. And can you even know? And I really love the way that they put it all together."
The relationship between Colonel Peter Conrad and Handler Clara Sorensen is, as Hayter puts it, "one of mutual distrust and loathing," mostly characterized by the latter's desire to forcefully infiltrate and analyze the former's mind, and the former's resolve to prevent that from happening.
"These characters are pretty complex, and they have a long history together," says Hayter. "And the fact that Jennifer and I have a long history together hopefully lends some emotional weight to our mutual disdain for each other."
"And his intent as the colonel to avoid this brain-piercing Claire Sorenson, my character is at least that intent on making it happen," adds Hale. "She's very committed, very goal oriented."
After 45 minutes of talking both candidly and professionally with the two bona fide legends, it's admittedly jarring to hear them abruptly morph into their characters and start bad-mouthing each other. For most of our conversation, I feel like I'm sitting in on dinner between two old friends, but on the topic of their characters in Synapse, the tone couldn't feel more opposite.
Both were careful not to divulge any story spoilers, of course, but I'm eager to see how that dynamic plays out when Synapse launches exclusively on PSVR 2 on July 4.
In the meantime, here are the best VR games available now.
