This past week, Wikia got a chance to play Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance in its entirety. While my preview for that will have to wait, I did get a chance to have a short talk with Yuji Korekado of Kojima Productions and Atsushi Inaba from Platinum games. Check out the interview below with their insight into the development of Revengeance!
How has fan community input helped in the development of this game?[]
Korekado: From the beginning, Metal Gear Rising happened because we heard a lot of fans say out loud, and give us feedback, that when they played Metal Gear Solid 4 and they saw Raiden pull out his acrobatic parts against the Geckos, they wanted to play that, as a player. So that's kind of how the project actually kicked off.
How do you balance giving the game its own feel and still maintaining Metal Gear tradition?[]
Inaba: So first and foremost, the genre is completely different. When we designed the game, we didn't event think about how it would include stealth at this point. At that point it was completely just action based and we didn't think about any stealth or sneaking methods.
Now if you look at the game in its entirety, the story, the worldview, the entire timeline of it - items that appear in the game - there are a lot of things that really relate to Metal Gear, and Solid especially. We feel that fans can embrace that and enjoy that. The game itself, the genre, we think they will enjoy a seperate kind of new Metal Gear that is in the works and have fun with that as well.
What sort of thought went into creating items like the Pole-Arm or the Mariachi outfit in the game?[]
I: So when it comes to the weapons, especially the pole-arm, one of the bosses' weapons, you can really expect something different from what Raiden usually uses, which is the HF Blade. We wanted to include a lot of variety in the action in this game and of course we thought if you just kept cutting things up with the HF Blade it might get a little bit one-sided and dull. So each boss weapon and unique weapon has its own speciality, especially the pole-arm. It is an introductory weapon. Anyone can come in not really used to an action game, play this, and have fun with it. All the weapons from each boss has its own unique element to it, which provides another way of having action. Each player can enjoy their own way throughout the game.
I was surprised by how funny the game was, can you talk about humor in MGR: Revengeance?[]
I: So for humor, just in general, we feel that it is necessary. In the background it might be very serious, or the elements in the game are very serious, and every now and then you have to put a laugh in there to create a wave of things, so that every moment is not stressful for the players. If you add a little bit of messaging of some humor, whether it's related to story or just game design, it creates some variety of emotions. We feel that that wave is something important for gaming.
What has been the biggest challenge in designing a game around Raiden?[]
I: Working on this game and centralizing on Raiden, not really the worldview or MGS' background - that wasn't a challenging point. It's more about the blade mode, of free cutting. Platinum Games thought that it was very essential and it would be a fun aspect, but how do we implement that into the game design? There are many challenges. Of course just cutting the entire time would not be fun for a lot of people, so how do we make it feel very cool, like you're cutting something. So that is something that took a lot of challenge putting into the game. Now it feels a lot better than it was in the beginning.
How do you balance making the game accessible to new players while making a deep and complex fighting system?[]
K: So from a Platinum Games standpoint, they go into the game not thinking about entry level. They want to make an action game that's fun, and that's the central idea. From there it's easier to make it more "core", adding combos, and adding development phases where it becomes deeper. So it is more appealing to hardcore fans at that point.
Now we feel with all the action elements included, and variety of that included, it appeals more to the hardcore action games, but from our standpoint, Kojima Production, we need to have the elements for the news guys that want to play this game to come in and have an easy time to blend in and play. That is the tough part. So it is easy to add elements to make it harder, but adding a way to make it entry level to new players is something that is difficult, but we were able to do it, and I think we are all proud of that.
I: We feel that there are so many elements to this game, that any player can come to this game and play through it as an action game. If you just keep cutting, keep pressing buttons, you can probably get through the game. Now with that said, we want to add levels to it where players can come in and say, "I want to get through this stage making things look cooler. I want to make a YouTube video and make things look a lot cooler." And there is levels to that, whether it be the blade mode, whether it be the combo system, whether it be the Zendatsus. Adding combinations to that, making their own cool gameplay videos, is something we can expect players to do. Adding that level and the intensity to the game was something that was a challenge as well.
Is there something you want fans of the Metal Gear series to pay attention to in particular?[]
K: For fans, we want them to look at how Raiden developed into this new main character as he is now.