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Gaming => General Gaming Discussion => Topic started by: Ben on December 15, 2011, 06:59:34 pm
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Indecision killed Metal Gear Solid: Rising. Hideo Kojima, creator of Metal Gear Solid, left his team at Kojima Productions to its own devices when working on Rising. It was an action game unlike anything he'd ever worked on, so the big decisions fell on his 200-strong team of young developers. He thought minimal involvement with the game would give an inexperienced group an opportunity to grow.
In hindsight, Kojima says, he should have stepped in and started calling some shots. After all, nobody else was. Rising encountered numerous issues during its long and strenuous development period. By the time he came to terms with the mess he had on his hands, Kojima canceled Metal Gear Solid: Rising. It was a lost cause. With so much great tech and leftover pieces, the revered designer wasn't content to let it die. His solution? Ask a friend for a favor.
Kojima asked Platinum Games to bring Rising back to life. The Bayonetta developer thought he was joking.
In Kojima's own words, Rising was meant to be "stupid and thoughtless" fun. The ability to cut anything and everything with a katana was a large part of this. In previous demos, we watched Raiden dismember men at all angles, as well as cut elevated objects to crush enemies below. It didn't work. Well, technically the mechanic was fine -- the slice-and-dice physics were quite the accomplishment after a year of tech tinkering. The problem with cutting in-game geometry is that it conflicts with a lot of design ideas. Think about it: As a developer, you can't limit the player when he or she can just carve through the world. There would be no guidance. This was the primary problem with Rising, and certainly not the last.
The frame rate and combat just weren't there when Kojima wanted it to be. This was a weak game with great ideas, but nobody within KojiPro could come to any conclusions about what to do about it. Kojima equates his huge staff to an assembly line; everyone had a specific assignment for the project. There wasn't much room for creative contribution, so Rising stagnated. For this studio, it was dead in the water and beyond repair. Hideo Kojima killed Metal Gear Solid Rising at the end of 2010.
Almost immediately afterward, he started thinking about outsourcing the game. At the very least, it would get done at another studio. Kojima considered bringing it to a western developer, and jokes about returning to a North American developer a year later to find the katana replaced by "a gun with a chainsaw, or something." There's a sense of truth to this, though. The weapon is what kept Rising in the east. "The katana is one of the main concepts for the game, and that's very difficult to explain," Kojima says, "so I thought I would need a Japanese company."
Atushi Inaba, the only producer at Platinum Games, has been friends with Hideo Kojima for more than a decade. He approached his friend with the idea of revitalizing the project, and Platinum promptly agreed. It's a small studio already knee-deep in development on Anarchy Reigns, but it's a small studio filled with Metal Gear nerds. Inaba says the entire team is a Solid Snake enthusiast, which he sees as the greatest strength to creating a Metal Gear game.
Kojima, on the other hand, looks at it a little differently. He sees his studio and Platinum Games as very similar development houses with considerably different work environments. The intimacy of Platinum's workspace gives the tiny team the opportunity to collaborate and create side by side. The Metal Gear creator admires this older approach to game development, and is once again stepping away from the work to leave those in charge to make it happen. He's involved in Rising, but, as before, is letting the designers work without him getting in the way. He trusts Platinum to meet his expectations.
For Inaba, meeting expectations isn't enough. To accomplish the original goals of Metal Gear Rising -- fast action, a cool hero cutting stuff, and no stealth (something the KojiPro team couldn't seem to let go of; "ghosts of the past," Kojima suspects) -- Platinum wants to challenge Kojima. Inaba says Platinum aims to make "something completely different from what Mr. Kojima wants to do."
The new team doesn't have much flexibility because it's on a tight schedule -- "high-speed development" as they're calling it -- so Rising has a more unified creative focus than before. Platinum realized the original Fox Engine was too strict and it couldn't use it. Chucking the original game's guts out the window is a bold step, but it shows the developer's commitment to making the best version of a game Kojima Productions couldn't complete.
Platinum is making Rising using its own engine, which already works well for this genre. Inaba and Kojima share a mutual confidence in the newly dubbed Metal Gear Rising: Revengenace. For Kojima, Revengeance represents a form of revenge, getting back at himself to prove the game can be done. Good thing, too. He doesn't see himself working on a traditional Metal Gear game again -- something he's said before, certainly, but he sees Rising as the future. Inaba sees Rising as something different from the norm. It's a rare chance for us to experience a beloved universe from an entirely new perspective.
At least there's some conviction this time around. Revengeance already has the upper hand over its progenitor in that regard. Here's hoping the rest comes together.
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/121/1214912p1.html
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For Inaba, meeting expectations isn't enough. To accomplish the original goals of Metal Gear Rising -- fast action, a cool hero cutting stuff, and no stealth (something the KojiPro team couldn't seem to let go of; "ghosts of the past," Kojima suspects) -- Platinum wants to challenge Kojima. Inaba says Platinum aims to make "something completely different from what Mr. Kojima wants to do."
The new team doesn't have much flexibility because it's on a tight schedule -- "high-speed development" as they're calling it -- so Rising has a more unified creative focus than before. Platinum realized the original Fox Engine was too strict and it couldn't use it. Chucking the original game's guts out the window is a bold step, but it shows the developer's commitment to making the best version of a game Kojima Productions couldn't complete.
Platinum is making Rising using its own engine, which already works well for this genre. Inaba and Kojima share a mutual confidence in the newly dubbed Metal Gear Rising: Revengenace. For Kojima, Revengeance represents a form of revenge, getting back at himself to prove the game can be done. Good thing, too. He doesn't see himself working on a traditional Metal Gear game again -- something he's said before, certainly, but he sees Rising as the future. Inaba sees Rising as something different from the norm. It's a rare chance for us to experience a beloved universe from an entirely new perspective.
And the internet explodes in 3...2...1...
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Explode why? I think its good they are taking a break from anarchy reigns imo. That game doesn't look very apealing at the moment, and It helps taking a distance from a product to realise what needs to be changed to make it more apealing after a certain period.
I have an optimistic stance on this. I hope anarchy benefits from it
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This isnt about Anarchy Reigns.
I'm talking about the quotes above like Platinum saying
"doesn't have much flexibility because it's on a tight schedule"
and
"fast action, a cool hero cutting stuff, and no stealth (something the KojiPro team couldn't seem to let go of; "ghosts of the past," Kojima suspects) -- Platinum wants to challenge Kojima. Inaba says Platinum aims to make "something completely different from what Mr. Kojima wants to do."
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Shouldn't this be in the other games forum? PS, Kojima's a fag saying that in public.
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This isnt about Anarchy Reigns.
I'm talking about the quotes above like Platinum saying
"doesn't have much flexibility because it's on a tight schedule"
and
"fast action, a cool hero cutting stuff, and no stealth (something the KojiPro team couldn't seem to let go of; "ghosts of the past," Kojima suspects) -- Platinum wants to challenge Kojima. Inaba says Platinum aims to make "something completely different from what Mr. Kojima wants to do."
Lol oh, sorry. Well I guess it does kinda make him sound like an asshole
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Well my impression is that Kojima wants PLatinum to do their own thing. He wanted the original team to do that too. This is a spinoff and I think he just wants to expand the Metal Gear universe into something different. I doubt he'd have hired this team if they expected it to be anthing like the rest of the series.
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Well my impression is that Kojima wants PLatinum to do their own thing. He wanted the original team to do that too. This is a spinoff and I think he just wants to expand the Metal Gear universe into something different. I doubt he'd have hired this team if they expected it to be anthing like the rest of the series.
Hiring this team is going to rattle Capcom more than anything. Ok there's nothing they could do about it when they left and Capcom didn't really mind when they worked for sega considering the longstanding mutual respect the companies always had for eachother, but Konami who's always been a feirce rival and whoses style is quite the opposite? Platinum is still using the capcom 3D style that they/capcom peaked at during the PS2 era and they were better at it resurrecing old ips and new ones under the polygon era than Konami was considering Konami's struggles with getting a decent 3d polygon Contra off the ground. So they have to see their once marquee game style be co-operated with one of their big rivals on one of their big franchises?
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Capcom can't really do much about it...Capcom dissolved Clover into their other studios. A big group of them left to form their own studio. It's not the same studio and Capcom still has all their old IP so Capcom can feel free to be angry, but there's nothing they can do.
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Capcom can't really do much about it...Capcom dissolved Clover into their other studios. A big group of them left to form their own studio. It's not the same studio and Capcom still has all their old IP so Capcom can feel free to be angry, but there's nothing they can do.
I'm not saying they can stop them but they sure wouldn't be happy about it. I think you missed the point i was making. Capcom created a particular graphic style that most of the members of PG helped define,now that graphic style is being used to one of their real rivals that use to have a specific style of their own at one point. Essentially what were going to see in this MG game is a Konami game done in a capcom style,basically.
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I get what you're saying, but Capcom doesn't really care much about that style anymore.....at least, not in their recent games. :/
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I get what you're saying, but Capcom doesn't really care much about that style anymore.....at least, not in their recent games. :/
After having those games flop so hard I can see why. Though I think Capcom's Asura's Wrath is their own answer, plus they're working with a great team on it (CyberConnect2)
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I get what you're saying, but Capcom doesn't really care much about that style anymore.....at least, not in their recent games. :/
True to an extent,they will always evolve their style like Sega has/did/still doing but that doesn't mean they'd want their old style being used for one of their bigger rivals.