14 DAY TRIAL // Hideo Kojima, the creator of the Metal Gear series of video games, says that he initially wanted to have Gray Fox star in the upcoming Revengeance title instead of Raiden.
The veteran developer tells IGN that, “It was my staff in Kojima Productions that insisted on Raiden, and I respected their idea. I wanted to really focus on production than development, and they wanted to come up with a really cool hack-and-slash title with some Katana action and Raiden in it, and I thought ‘okay, that’s fine, I respect that’.”
He adds, “But in my personal opinion, I wanted to go for Frank Jaegar, (a.k.a. Gray Fox). But if we had gone with that, I would have had to write the script and then be really committed to creating the game.”
Ever since Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance was announced, Kojima has explained that he will only oversee development of the game and that younger members of his team will be directly in charge of it.
Raiden has been a controversial choice as a lead character because the fan community sees him as peripheral to the core narrative of the series and has been dissatisfied with his previous appearances.
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance has seen significant changes during development, especially after Platinum Games was brought on board to help and finish the game in 2011.
The game will focus on Raiden and will be centered on action set pieces, although some stealth elements have also been introduced late during the development process.
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance will be launched on the PlayStation 3 from Sony and the Xbox 360 from Microsoft on February 19 in the United States and on February 22 in Europe.
Hideo Kojima is actively working on another Metal Gear Solid title, called Ground Zeroes, which will use the traditional mechanics of the series.