Kojima Wanted Gray Fox as the Protagonist in Metal Gear Rising: Reveangence

The wait is almost over for Metal Gear Rising: Reveangence. The game comes out in about a month, with Raiden taking the lead role in a Metal Gear game for the first time since 2001’s Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. Originally, the game was being developed by Kojima Productions prior to Platinum Games taking the reigns and in an interview with IGN, Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima revealed that he wanted the man who first wore the Cyborg Ninja suit to be in the lead role.

“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.’  But in my personal opinion, I wanted to go for Frank Jaegar or 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.”

Kojima added that he was keen to pass the torch to “the younger generation in my team, and have been trying to do so for quite some time.” Metal Gear Rising: Reveangence is going to be interesting for a multitude of reasons. How will the hardcore Metal Gear fans take to this different play-style and will Platinum Games be praised or derided for their efforts on this title?

All of those questions will be answered really soon, but if Kojima ever wanted to do a prequel with Gray Fox, that would have MGS fans foaming at the mouth.

Metal Gear Rising: Reveangence will be released on February 22 in Europe and February 19 in North America for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3