Metal Gear Rising's bosses scrapped during Platinum handover, were 'some of the series best'

Metal Gear Solid: Rising had many playable bosses - some of which were apparently the best in the series - a script and levels that will never see the light of day. They were scrapped after current developer Platinum Games were chosen to take over and transform the game into Metal Gear Rising: Revengance. Kojima Productions has shed light on the lost content in a new interview.

Speaking with OPM, Kojima Productions producer Yuji Korekado explained the game's state at the time of the handover.

“The script was finished and the boss concepts were finished. The design was finished with those levels, and the levels were at the point where we could play it through in a white box – but we couldn’t come up with a core concept to tie it all together. In the end, we couldn’t finish the game.

“Just to brag a little bit about our designs," he added. "We believe that the bosses we created for Metal Gear Solid: Rising were probably some of the best in the series, but Saito came in and said, 'We’re not going to use these bosses.' So you’ll not be seeing them this time around.”

Korekado offered insight into why the bosses were canned, suggesting that they wouldn't have fit Platinum's focus on pure action, "The bosses in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance are very unique characters, and are game design-driven.

"As an action game, we believe that the bosses should resemble the dynamics of the design, and although they’re very unique, we believe that these characters very much fit into the Metal Gear world. And we hope you guys feel the same when you see them.”

Comparing the nature of the old bosses to Platinum's new creations, Platinum Games director Keiji Saito added, "as Korekado says, the boss battles and the bosses in general were completely different at the time. There were a lot of stealth concepts that were [being done] internally at Kojima Studios. Now that it’s an action game we had to revamp that, and Platinum Games provided a lot of input and a lot of ideas.”

Hmm, care to theorise about what the old boss battles were like? Let us know what you think below.