Kojima originally wanted Revengeance to star Gray Fox
"It was my staff in Kojima Productions that insisted on Raiden, and I respected their idea."
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance may put you in the cybernetic bladed high heels of the once reviled pretty boy Raiden, but originally series creator Hideo Kojima wanted it to star the franchise's original cyborg ninja Frank Jaegar aka Gray Fox.
"It was my staff in Kojima Productions that insisted on Raiden, and I respected their idea," said Kojima in an interview with IGN. "I wanted to really focus on production [rather] 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.'"
"In my personal opinion, I wanted to go for Frank Jaegar or Gray Fox," he added, referring to Solid Snake's old war buddy/rival/frienemy with an insanely convoluted backstory. "But if we had gone with that, I would have had to write the script and then be really committed to creating the game. I want to pass game development to the younger generation in my team, and have been trying to do so for quite some time. Before I never could give complete responsibilities for other games, but for Revengeance, they are fully in control."
"I am very happy to see the growth in my team and how they have developed such an incredible game."
While Revengeance won't star Gray Fox, a DLC skin of the character will be available, as detailed in the trailer below.
While Kojima walked away from Revengeance, he could only give away so much control over the series he'd dedicated the better part of the last quarter century to, so he's now working on Ground Zeroes, which he referred to as "the mainstream release."
Regarding the game that's probably-almost-definitely-MGS5, The Phantom Pain, Kojima said he "really liked" the trailer and that "it was very visually appealing."
"The lighting was very good," he added.
When asked about the protagonist's mullet resembling Snake, he replied, "It might have been an inspiration..." I'm afraid that's all we're getting on that now.
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is due out on Xbox 360 and PS3 on 22nd February. A demo is due next week on PSN and Xbox Live.