Metal Gear Rising Revengeance - What Happened?

hey hold on that's don't even that's not funny pull back now [Applause] [Music] ah metal gear the tactical stealth action franchise that warns against the military-industrial complex economic inequality and carries strong anti-nuclear messages but dresses all that up with bumblebee men girly posters and robotic dinosaurs it's a franchise that's been around since 1987 and i think most would agree that it's never had a single controversial entry or problem fraught development cycle ever nope not a one oh wait how silly of me there is metal gear rising revengeance now there's a pretty mean exquisite okay let me explain a good portion of you are already writing an angry comment right now oh i know you are so let me be clear revengeance is awesome one of the best action games ever released on the xbox 360 or ps3 why the only thing that really rivaled it was bayonetta and that's not really surprising but what is a bit shocking is that there was a concrete chance of things going down very very differently if you're a casual fan of metal gear or character action you might have forgotten or never even knew in the first place that metal gear rising had a very bumpy ride during its development however thanks to either a twist of fate sheer determination or maybe just good old fashion machine son ryden's hacky slashy adventure was plucked from the metal jaws of failure and launched into the shining red sun of success alrighty so metal gear solid four you remember that one right oh oh no well let me refresh your memory yeah so there you go after completing such a massive and complex game metal gear creator and norman reedus enthusiast hideo kojima sought to take a break from the franchise well okay not really he just he just took a break from big console metal gears to work on slightly smaller handheld metal gears anyway this left a good portion of kojima productions without much to do so a spin-off was the next logical step to use the engine and assets that went into mgs4 and to extend that into another game now one of the biggest surprises to come out of the guns of the patriots was the transformation of jack the ripper aka ryden aka mr lightning bolt he wasn't exactly welcomed with open arms by most of the metal gear fan base after his sons of liberty debut and that was something kojima wanted to change [Music] so after some cheeky references in snake eater he sought to make the characters so cool that people would go from saying all right into whoa ryden mission accomplished now to explain exactly how this total makeover came about and how ryden you know saved olga's baby from the patriots who we were told were dead kojima productions started developing a full game to answer those questions now since hideo himself was already busy making metal gear solid 5. i i mean metal gear solid 5 piece walker he decided to leave it in the hands of his staff with one simple edict do whatever you want these are the same employees that worked for years almost decades under kojima's consistent vision so being told that they would basically have carte blanche wasn't exactly a good thing it could have been but in reality the phrase paralyzed by choice is very much applicable here it took a little while for the team to form up with maneshi kamura being chosen to handle the directing duties who had up until that point only worked as an artist on previous metal gears so he was leading the project from more of a visual standpoint whereas gameplay and scenarios were coming from the team at large under these conditions though they struggled to come up with a solid concept for months in terms of production eugene coracado a long time programmer on the series since mgs1 who was then promoted to the position of associate producer really wanted the game to succeed although with so many different ideas and opinions he found it increasingly difficult to nail down a concept that everyone agreed on kojima told us to make it any way you like but i think we all had these preconceptions in our minds about what metal gear should be like that wound up shackling us as we tried to make it so the team looked at what they did know ryden always displayed an adeptness with a blade which was exemplified even further by all the flippy whippy [ __ ] he did in mgs4 so the team decided to hone in on that making the game strictly melee focused would give it a different feel than how solid naked or old snake fought in their respective games with that as a base the free-form cutting mechanics started to be built which would give ryden the ability to slice through anything via a kind of circular targeting system which would let him choose what limb needed to go [Music] concept art and design started to take shape with ryden's look retaining the cyborg feel that was introduced in mgs4 but redesigned to feel darker and more aggressive this would fit in better with the massive amounts of destruction he could cause cause not only could he cut open his enemies via the zandatsu technique he could topple entire structures in fact environmental damage was set to be a big gameplay feature as the player could attack enemies via falling debris and that was it that that was the entire game now we'll do a cut of that rotating watermelon oh my god that's the whole thing when its trailer was first shown at e3 2010 it showed off these features but unlike many other metal gear solid trailers there wasn't even a hint as to its story or setting ryden was in it and he could cut things and that's because ryden was in it and all he could do was cut things that's all they had the team were still struggling on how the game would actually play would it be stealth action both or something else entirely without that they couldn't really build a story around it without a story they couldn't really build expansive levels or boss fights therefore as 2010 wore on the metal gears ground to a halt with the team making very little forward progress just by looking closely at the footage you see here ryden's just casually waving his sword around and enemies are just melting around him there's no combo system in place nothing anchoring these attacks with a specific set of rules it bears a striking resemblance to the simple three-hit melee strings that were in like the last four metal gear games and that's because it was in the end i think it's because we couldn't nail down the game's core we spent a long time within kojima productions making the game and there were some aspects of it that were fun but by the end of it all we had was a big team and no really common image shared among everyone in it we were at a dead end that's something kojima has experienced several times before and he concluded that we probably wouldn't finish at all if this continued now 2010 was an important year for kojima productions in general as the man himself had just finished a peace walker in april so when he checked in with the rising team later that year he grew concerned with the lack of organization and vision that the game had now yes even though the core development of peace walker had finished kojima still couldn't directly step in as there was still peacewalker's extensive dlc as well as supervising bluepoint on the mgs hd collection so this is where rising truly entered the alert phase if they couldn't find a way to salvage it then it would be game over ryden is everything all right right right it's then natural to think that contact in an outside developer would be the ideal solution but it was a direction kojima had some hesitation over i've worked on collaborative efforts in the past and they didn't go well and that became a sort of trauma for me getting real results from this one was a really good case study i think now while he doesn't say it by name it's easy to picture the complicated three-way technically four-way collaboration between kojima productions silicon knights nintendo and ryuuhei kitamura to be a bit difficult judging by that game's sluggish sales and divisive reaction so you could say that his reluctance for further collaborations was somewhat justified however with their options dwindling both coracato and kojima were discussing what to do next and that's when kojima finally brought up platinum games as a possible partner and while corocado thought that they were a great choice he simply assumed they would say no so the possibility was simply dropped weeks rolled on with no other prospects and that's when kojima decided to go all in he was going to directly pitch rising to then platinum ceo tatsuyama nami and if he got turned down well at least he tried corocado's job in all this was to put together the presentation all the concept art the ideas basically everything that had been done so far to everyone's surprise platinum accepted as the opportunity to work on a metal gear project was too enticing to pass up even though they were busy with other titles such as anarchy reigns and the wonderful 101 while this news meant that the game was saved corocado had mixed feelings about it to be frank it was frustrating i mean here i was doing a presentation all about this thing that we couldn't finish ourselves what's more we were presenting it to an outfit that had what we didn't and would be perfect for leaving development duties too with that frustration though there was also this new strength that no matter what role i'm playing now i was going to get this project finished now of course platinum had a caveat which was the timeline itself rising was always intended to bridge the gap between sons of liberty and guns of the patriots but platinum didn't want to be beholden by either game storyline so they and kojipro agreed to place the game after the conclusion of mgs4 which would make it the last chronological entry of the metal gear saga this would then free them up to craft whatever story they wanted and when you're talking about metal gear the narrative would obviously be an integral part of the game in terms of the mechanics well kojima productions let platinum do as they wished even if they felt that the free cutting mechanics should be i'm sorry cut then they wouldn't object they just wanted the game to be finished and be of a high quality there were two restrictions though koji pro would still have final approval on the script to make sure it didn't contradict anything but the other one was a bit more concerning the release date it had to come out february 2013 no delays [Applause] [Music] so to make the game in just two short years platinum realized that it would simply be faster to take their own engine and technology and to rebuild everything from scratch to ensure that would run at 60 frames per second none of the prior technical work made by the original team at koji pro would be used as that was always targeting 30 frames with their prior experience though platinum also quickly honed in on the game's core a high octane action title familiar to their fans style rankings combos and clutch defensive mechanics but now it would be combined with the presentation and story of metal gear codec sequences over-the-top bosses with catchy code names and even some light stealth elements platinum did have to scale back some ideas to get it all done though gone was the ambitious destruction physics seen in the original trailer and were instead replaced with more mundane versions like cutting down trees and scaffoldings which didn't really affect enemies ryden's naruto run ninja run i caught myself there was also originally planned to be more elaborate because when the game resurfaced as metal gear rising revengeance at the end of 2011 a new trailer showed him narutowing along walls goddammit and attacking enemies from aerial angles this would not be seen in the final game as making sure it worked along every surface without collision issues would probably have taken a lot of time in testing therefore platinum just zen datsued it implementing certain metal gear staples also proved to be somewhat tricky as codec conversations clash with the game's frame rate in mgs 2 and 4 codex were presented with real-time 3d models talking back and forth but with the new engine this wouldn't be possible so to keep the frame rate stable and silky smooth they were changed to video files of a character speaking in a loop it's just overlaid onto the gameplay now even through all of this platinum solving problems and working incredibly quickly kojima was still a bit cautious tatsuyama nami recalls the schedule was really tight kojima was really worried about the schedule and he'd asked me time and again you are you sure you can do this like if we couldn't then there was some stuff we'd have to figure out about the future so tell me as soon as possible if you can't and then quick as a lightning bolt the cut-off point for the game's gold masters struck and they needed to lock everything in leading up to that february 19th release date now if fans wanted to say experience ryden's new moves a little earlier well they could purchase playstation all-stars battle royale because ryzen needed some promotion and playstation all-stars needed some stars for more info on that turn your codec frequency over to 140.69 the game received fantastic reviews and fan reception befitting a metal gear action title developed by platinum games who had proved that they were quite skilled working under high frequency pressure the fast action tight story engaging boss fights and explosive soundtrack endeared itself to many although some bemoan the change in genre and the game's short length that didn't really hurt sales though because while it was always assumed it wouldn't fare as well as mainline metal gears the game reportedly sold well over 2 million copies across the xbox 360 the playstation 3 and steam further proving the fact that its developer is always platinum given that success correcto hinted at possibly continuing writing's adventures but that was during happier kojima production days i think the frustration that we weren't able to get it done with our own hands is going to stay with me for the rest of my life still mgr is a game that couldn't have happened without this collaboration that's something which makes me happy but personally there is this drive in me to give it another try sometime but uh due to all the everything that has since transpired in the subsequent years between konami top brass and hideo kojima any hope for a sequel to revengeance i guess re-re-vengeance resurrection was definitively dashed i mean konami could certainly green light another one if they wanted a platinum is still very much in business the game was made without kojima directly at the helm so it's entirely possible that we might something now what the hell i say of course not it wasn't there's not going to be and my high i just this is this is getting a little depressing anyway please enjoy this back flipping cat ah that's better if you know of any other weapons that will drag the world into the 21st century i mean video games or any other media that had troubled development cycles let me know in the comments below ninja run over to my twitter or step onto the frigid shores of the flaphouse vip archipelago and become a big boss to nominate the subject of our next episode see you next time and thanks for watching [Music] [Music] is

Channel: Matt McMuscles

Views: 578,309

Keywords: Metal Gear, Metal Gear Rising Revengeance, Wha Happun, What Happened, Matt McMuscles, Konami, Video Game Documentaries

Id: shv5vsHOER4

Length: 20min 1sec (1201 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 20 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/The_Draigg]

I’m just glad that this game exists, even if it was a hard road to make it possible. It’s like a rare beast that comes along every once in a while that’s made of pure hype.

A shame that the Metal Gear series is relegated to pachinko now and this probably won’t get a sequel, but at least it is still a shining beacon of how cool Metal Gear and Raiden can be.

[u/Hallonbat]

Metal Gear Rising such a good game.

[u/AkiZayoi]

I wonder how many people downvoted this because they don't know that Wha Happun isn't always for games that were failures in the end

[u/ShadowFeindX96]

I still have the plasma lap I got for my overpriced steel box preorder. Thing's rad.

[u/KingMario05]

Wait, it bombed? I thought it was a hit, and that Platinum were up for a sequel, but then Konami... well... pulled a Konami.

[u/James-Avatar]

Part of my first ever paycheque went to this game.

[u/hamie96]

Wait, why did Matt include Madworld in the pile of bad PlatinumGames? That game was fantastic.

[u/Shotgang]

Man I remember the news about this game back in the day. I'm not sure when they first revealed it, but they kept avoiding questions about this game when it didn't appear in conferences. For some time, people even assumed it was canceled.

This was at a time that Konami also had a lot of misses with their games (what I assume ended up with Kojima's leaving the company and that whole "burning down bridges with the gaming community as a whole" after so many failures). The 2010's were a rough decade for anyone that liked anything from Konami (me included).

Here's hoping that news about a internal restructuring of the company that I heard some weeks ago can bring them back to form or at least in some capacity bring out some good games, even if it isn't something AAA.

[u/ProjectSINQ]

It's a shame that this is getting downvoted because its Matt's content, despite the video being very informative to people that are unaware of MGR's early developments.