Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, the spin-off action game from Bayonetta studio PlatinumGames, won't just be relentless hacking and slashing, even though much of the gameplay revolves around hero Raiden's sword. Players will be able to direct Raiden's sword strokes, leading to precision sword fighting.
However, Metal Gear fans will still find that there's plenty of stealth and sneaking involved, even if the game's action slant means that Raiden is always pressing on ahead rather than backtracking.
"In the beginning, we wrapped around the core concept of just having Raiden moving forward," producer Atsushi Inaba told Shack News. "It was based on sole action. But looking back, it would have been very dull and very centered around just cutting. We think that players would just give up on it so we needed to have more options and variety and that's when we decided to include a lot more stealth and different routes where players can really flex on their play style."
One thing Raiden won't be doing is blocking. Instead, Revengeance uses a more realistic style of sword play where attacks are parried and chained into an offensive combo. "We never want him blocking or moving sideways in order to defend himself," Inaba says. "We always want him on the offensive. So when he moves and parries something, it connects to his next combo. As a character and as the concept, we wanted to keep in line with that."
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is out on February 22nd for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.