In a recent interview with SPOnG, Metal Gear series creator Hideo Kojima looks back at his collaboration with Platinum Games, heaping praise upon the studio and musing about the future beyond Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance.
Aside from Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes, which Mr. Kojima is currently helming, he also has a sequel for Revengeance in mind. And he would like to work with no other developer than Platinum Games.
“Really, Platinum’s team is great at creating action games,” he says. “They do it better than anyone else. I love them personally, as individuals…”
The auteur developer first lauds Platinum’s efforts, in which the team’s experience making similar action games helped greatly to complete the action spinoff. Mr. Kojima confesses that it was difficult to finish Revengeance on his own.
“Honestly, I’ve been making games for over 25 years and the state that this game was in when it went to Platinum… was really a mess! The fact that they were able to pull it off is very impressive.”
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance was first unveiled at E3 2009 under the title Metal Gear Solid: Rising, with the slogan “Lightning Bolt Action.” Though the final release does not look any different from its original form, its atmospheric choices prior to Platinum’s intervention say otherwise, as seen in the E3 2010 trailer below:
Production on Rising began to falter late 2010, when the team found itself in development hell. According to Famitsu, the team lacked a common vision of what the game should be.
“We spent a long time within Kojima Productions making the game,” says Kojima Productions producer Yuji Korekado, “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.”
Kojima’s allowance for creative freedom inflated each member’s preconceptions for what Metal Gear should be, aggravating development limbo even further. From this point, the game faced cancellation.
In an unexpected turn, Kojima consulted with Atsushi Inaba of Platinum Games, agreeing to have no involvement with the gameplay and leaving Platinum to—as Kojima insisted—make it however they like. Kojima Productions, however, would retain control over story and cutscene direction. Furthermore, they gave Platinum a strict deadline to complete the troubled game. Fortunately, it was finished on schedule.
Mr. Kojima would later tease about Platinum Games for endeavors where they did not commit themselves with schedules. He says: “Platinum makes excellent games, there’s no arguing about that – but they’re not very good at honoring schedules […] I made it clear that in order to succeed on a worldwide scale, you not only have to make a good product, but you also have to keep a tight schedule.” When they did finish, Kojima would jest that even Mr. Hideki Kamiya would be surprised.
Finally, Mr. Kojima ends with what may be the most powerful saying about this company: He states if their technology is up to par, they can become a “world-class studio”.
“The one thing I think they can still improve on is their technological level. [It] is not quite up to par, so maybe for the next project if we did something with them, we would maybe have them use the FOX engine. Or, perhaps their next generation engine […]”
Following Mr. Kojima’s last quote, it may not be an impossibility for Platinum to reach that status. Its current expeditions seem to show signs of monumental progression.
Hopefully this collaboration between Kojima Productions and Platinum Games may not only lead to growth between these two studios, but also a healthy bond that will last for many years, and lead to many great new games.
