For the life of me, I cannot understand why Metal Gear Rising isn’t getting more love. It’s got some talented lads from the studio behind Vanquish, Platinum Games, working on it and it’s also a fresh spin on the cardboard box sneaking simulator that Hideo Kojima came up with. Cyborgs!Robots! Action! Y U NO LIKE? Bah, here’s a few words then developers Atsushi Inaba and Kenji Saito about the game and how it came to be.
Speaking to PSM3 via CVG, Inaba says that Hideo Kojima approached him to work on the game while at a party;
The first time I approached Mr. Kojima was at a party. I asked how Metal Gear Rising was doing, and there was no response from him at the time. The second time was at another party, and Mr Kojima actually asked, “Do you want to develop Rising for us?” And this was very… not business like… It was just instantly, “Do you want to make Rising for us?” So I thought it was a joke.
The third time it was official and at that meeting Mr Kojima asked us if we could make the game. As an independent studio we have to think about the staff members we have available to complete the project, and truthfully there wasn’t much opening, but I felt that this was a title we had to do.
At that meeting I knew I wanted to do that game.
Starting fresh on the game then and scrapping everything that Kojima and his studio had created, Inaba and Saito then mentioned the games bosses from that first build, characters which Kojima Productions producer Yuki Koreakado felt were some of the best in the series to date;
“When Kojima studios were first making Rising, Boris [Volgin] was included in the initial concept” Saito said.
We did of course look at it and refer to it, and there are some characters we reused from the original concept, but ultimately, the most important concept that we needed to stay within is the Metal Gear world.
The boss battles and the bosses in general were completely different in the original concept. There were a lot of stealth concepts that they were doing internally at Kojima studios, so now that it’s solely an action game the design and the action sequences are completely different.
All of our boss concepts and any kind of art concept that comes out of Platinum Games are supervised by our art director at Kojima studios, Yoji Shinkawa, and I think that reflects positively in the game.
So is Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance a cross between previous Platinum games such as Bayonetta and Vanquish? Saito says that there are some familiar elements there, but Rising still manages to carve it’s own path (SEE WHAT I DID THERE?);
We wouldn’t necessarily say it’s a mix, but of course Bayonetta and Vanquish are past projects, and that experience has led to some of the things we’re able to do in Rising. So the experience helps, but Rising isn’t necessarily a mix. It’s something completely different.
I’m still ridiculously excited for this game, as it’s part of a two pronged attack of one of my favourite action genres, the third person hack/slash attack. With DmC in January, and this game in February, it’s like two Christmases in a row.
Minus the annoying carollers that I chased away last night with AC/DC music that is.
Last Updated: December 7, 2012
