Kojima Productions has been clearing up some rumors and misconceptions regarding Metal Gear Rising Revengeance following the game's unveiling earlier today.

First off, a rumor that quickly surfaced after the game's unveiling: Rising is a proper sequel in the Metal Gear Solid saga. This, according to the Kojipro official Twitter, is not the case. "We've only said that the period setting is several years after MGS4. Metal Gear Rising is not part of the Metal Gear Solid series. At present, we can't say more than this."

Rising was also the main subject of the latest Hideraji podcast, with producer Yuji Korekado sharing a few additional details about the project. Here's some of what was discussed based off a summary of the broadcast that's making the rounds (I haven't given the broadcast a listen for myself, so my translation is second hand -- there may be a few differences when you hear the official English background story via a video that will be released on the 13th).

The original Rising was announced as a game where you can chop up anything. The development staff quickly created just that. However, they felt that this alone would be insufficient.

The original Rising got to the point where the staff no longer knew what the core of the game should be. At some point, Kojima said that the project probably would not be able to be completed. However, the staff insisted that it could be done. In the end, they cancelled the project. At this point, they'd already fleshed out many areas outside of the game design component, like the story and the motion capture.

One day, Kojima leaned that members of Platinum Games had come to the Kojima Productions studio. Platinum said that it's unfortunate that the game was in a half done state. They were excited about the project that they took over.

Platinum suggested the concept of "a game where it feels so good to chop things up that you would die" (I think my translation may be weird here -- "It's so good that you die" is just a Japanese way of saying it's amazingly good.)

The title was changed because the game is different from the Metal Gear Solid series. It's a new Metal Gear.

Hideki Kamiya is not the game's director. The director will be announced later.

When restarting the project, they were originally going to use the original story. After Platinum received the data from Kojima Productions, they said they wanted to remake the story.

From Kojima's Twitter (left to right): Platinum CEO Tatsuya Minami, Kojima, Platinum producer Atsushi Inaba and Korekado.