Starting as a midquel story (set between Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots staring Raiden, Kojima Productions first teased of their development of Metal Gear Solid: Rising in 2009. Going through development hell, the studio nearly cancelled the title - attributing the main cause to the conflict between the game design (Raiden could cut anything, level design (and related programming associated) and the desire to have the game as both a stealth title and an action one.
Hideo Kojima later approached Platinum Games to propose a developer collaboration - thus Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance was born. The story shifted to being set after Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots and the new collaboration brought about a strong emphasis on hack and slash gameplay. The title is not considered part of the Metal Gear Solid series - rather is a spinoff title from MGS4.
