Hideo Kojima would have preferred Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance to feature Gray Fox rather than Raiden, but the famous Metal Gear Solid creator allowed the silver-haired star of Metal Gear Solid 2 to take the leading role because he wanted the younger members of his team to take control of the game.

"It was my staff in Kojima Productions that insisted on Raiden," said Kojima in an interview with IGN, "and I respected their idea. I wanted to really focus on production than development, and they wanted to come up with a really cool hack-and-slash title with some Katana action and Raiden in it, and I thought ‘okay, that’s fine, I respect that’."

"But in my personal opinion, I wanted to go for Frank Jaegar or Gray Fox. But if we had gone with that, I would have had to write the script and then be really committed to creating the game."

Gray Fox was one of Snake's primary antagonists in the original 1998 Metal Gear Solid, and was the first inhabitant of the series' long-running and constantly evolving cyborg ninja suit.

Bayonetta developer Platinum Games was drafted in to finish off Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance in 2011, refocusing the game around its action elements. As for Kojima Productions' role in development, Kojima said he wanted "to pass game development to the younger generation in my team, and have been trying to do so for quite some time."

"Before I never could give complete responsibilities for other games, but for Revengeance, they are fully in control. Besides, if I had created the game and directed it, it wouldn’t have been this game. I am very happy to see the growth in my team and how they have developed such an incredible game."

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance will be released for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on February 19 in the US and February 22 in Europe. Its latest trailer was released this week, and a demo will be available on January 22.