By now, everyone should be familiar with how Metal Gear Rising rose from the ashes; after struggling to find a unified vision for what would be the solo debut for Solid Snake's second banana, the game was close to being flat out cancelled before Platinum Games offered to step in and reboot the project from scratch.
The end result is a game that seems very close to what gamers have come to expect from Platinum, with shades of Madworld and Bayonetta, clearly on display. But will the game have any hints of what Metal Gear Rising was originally supposed to be? Nope. Not at all.
Kojima Productions producer Yuji Korekado, in an interview that Polygon recently highlighted, revealed that much of the groundwork that was established before Platinum Games took over… and there was quite a bit done already… have all been done away with.
This includes the game's script, boss fight concepts, and level designs. The problem was, the original team couldn't figure a way to get everything to connect in a sensible manner.
Take the boss battles for example. They ended up resembling a more traditional Metal Gear Solid-type approach, meaning more stealth-based and less hank-and-slash. Which goes against the intention of the game originally, so Kojima Productions was indeed somewhat going around in circles.
Naturally, many gamers out there, especially those who are not found of the new direction, will now all fantasized about the possibility of this previous iteration of the game becoming playable to the public, somehow. Seems like a pointless wish, but stranger things have happened.
