Metal Gear Rising producer highlights balancing issues

By: Musa Afridi

  |   October 9th, 2012   |  

Uncategorized

Yuji Korekado, from Kojima Productions and the producer of Revengeance, points out how the game’s concept made designing levels a nightmare and how the katana played a major role in choosing who to outsource the game’s development to.

The next instalment in the Metal Gear Solid series may be some time away, but the series is diversifying and splitting off into multiple directions. Apart from Metal Gear Solid 5, the series will also see the release of Ground Zeroes and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance.

The latter is the topic of much discussion these days as the game is fast approaching its release date. Originally intended to be the first game to be developed on Kojima Productions’ own in-house Fox Engine, the development responsibilities of the game were outsourced to Platinum Games.

However, Kojima Productions remained involved on the story and narrative front, as well as for all the cut-scenes in the game, while Platinum is set to handle all the gameplay elements of the title.

When asked why the studio chose to partner with Platinum Games on the project, Yuji Korekado, the producer of the game, explained that they wanted someone that could understand the feel and ethos of Raiden’s weapon of choice, the katana.

He said, “We decided it would be a Japanese developer because they would understand the feeling of the katana, but among Japanese developers, who do we have that’s a good action game developer? The only answer we had was Platinum.”

Fair enough, however, Korekado also explained that the game’s concept of being able to cut through everything meant that designing each level was a nightmare but one that they finally balanced out.

“Oh, the level design and the game balance was impossible to achieve for us! The level design was completely destroyed by the concept.” Explained the producer, before continuing, “When we started working with Platinum we had to begin thinking of how to adjust the concept of being able to cut anything, to putting it down to a game – that was a huge difficulty that we went through.”

Although that will ultimately something that the gaming community will decide, the developers seem to be satisfied with what they have achieved so far. Metal Gear Rising sees a departure from the classic Metal Gear experience that has become one of the biggest names in gaming since its release over 25 years ago.

Every teaser and announcement regarding the title is followed by nearly every gamer, whether they have played the game or not. If Rising can prove to be half as successful as the Solid series then it could very well go on to become the game in the action genre, if not, then there’s always the Solid series to wipe the mind clean of any bad memories.