Kojima originally wanted Metal Gear Rising to star Gray Fox
1/19/13 8:17pm
Acclaimed game developer Hideo Kojima recently visited Dubai as part of the grand celebration of the Metal Gear franchise’s 25th Anniversary. During his visit, he sat down with IGN Middle East’s Hakim Abu Nahel to discuss the anniversary and the upcoming release of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, among other things.
In what was perhaps the most interesting part of the interview, Nahel inquired as to why Raiden was chosen to be the lead character in MGR as opposed to the fan favorite cyborg ninja Gray Fox. Interestingly enough, Kojima replied that he originally wanted Gray Fox to take that spot but the team at Kojima Productions disagreed and fought hard to give that position to Raiden.
“It was actually not my idea, 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. I want to pass game development to the younger generation in my team, and have been trying to do so for quite some time.”
Kojima seems to feel that this decision was ultimately for the best as he also said the game would have been completely different had he given himself full control and he’s proud that his team was able to create “such an incredible game.”
Nahel also asked about the Fox Engine and the mysterious Phantom Pain trailer that debuted during the VGAs. Unfortunately, Kojima couldn’t give out much info regarding either topic but he did (jokingly) say the design of a certain character in the trailer might have been inspired by Snake.
Well, at least the reporter was able to get to the bottom of one puzzling mystery. Personally, I think Gray Fox would have been a great choice for Revengeance’s protagonist but Raiden seems to be filling the part to a rather bad ass tee, so the development team made a great choice.
To read the full interview, click the link below. Kojima’s answers are quite the interesting read.
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g1 DISCUSSIONS
darkhyrulelord
That wouldn't surprise me at all.
Tom the Iron Man
Interesting...
Yashooo
Maybe make an extra skin to dress up as Gray Fox? That be cool :)
VettoRyo
Already in as a Pre-order Item.
ZeroMilan
interesting would've liked to hear what the story would've been about, DLC?
bonesy
that would have made more sense, a sort of what happened after metal gear 2
gabrielh
I really wish that could have happened. Gray Fox has always been my favorite character in the Metal Gear series.
Meteo Dragoon
I know what skin I'll be using if I get the game. Grey Fox is 20X the man Raiden was....
mesorocks
I wish the game was about Gray Fox, it would have made the game look much more interesting.
Monderetro
Wait, wasn't Gray Fox kinda dead by MGS1?