Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance revisions revealed

After a lengthy stay on the back burner, Metal Gear Solid: Rising returned to the forefront this week as Konami reintroduced the title as Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. The big revelation about the spin-off to the Metal Gear Solid series was that it is now being developed by Vanquish and Bayonetta studio Platinum Games, but Konami has revealed that's far from the only change the project has undergone.

The publisher has launched the game's official website, with new details about the new-look Revengeance. First, the game's story has changed places in the Metal Gear timeline. Originally, Metal Gear Solid: Rising was intended to take place before the events of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, showing how the character of Raiden made his transformation into the cyborg ninja of the 2007 PlayStation 3 hit. However, when Platinum Games was attached to the project, the time frame was moved to several years after Metal Gear Solid 4, to a time when cyborgs are becoming more commonplace in the world.

That goes hand in hand with another change to the game. While Metal Gear Solid: Rising was originally intended to showcase a mix of stealth and action gameplay, Revengeance drops the stealth aspect to focus exclusively on action. Konami also dropped the "Solid" from the title to distance itself from the particular brand of stealth action people associate with the Metal Gear Solid series.

In a series of posts today on his Twitter account, Platinum Games producer Atsushi Inaba addressed the perception that the change to Revengeance was undertaken because Kojima Productions couldn't make Metal Gear Solid: Rising work.

"It seems there are some who wish to imply PlatinumGames was able to achieve what Kojima Productions could not--interviewers among them," Inaba said, continuing, "This notion is spurious. Clearly, we have not yet produced any results in the world of Metal Gear."

While Inaba acknowledged that the changes made to the game have met with mixed reactions, he also stressed that not everything from the original vision for Metal Gear Solid: Rising has been abandoned.

"[Metal Gear Solid: Rising's] concept excited us," Inaba said. "We have love and respect for it, as we do the character of Raiden and the idea of freely cutting anything apart."

For more on that core concept, check out GameSpot's previous coverage of Metal Gear Solid: Rising.