Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance - Kojima wanted Gray Fox to star instead of Raiden

Hideo Kojima has said if he'd had his way, Gray Fox would be starring in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance instead of Raiden.

Speaking with IGN ME, Kojima said had that occurred though, he would have been forced to take a more hands-on role with the title.

"It was my staff in Kojima Productions that insisted on Raiden, and I respected their idea," he said. "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, (a.k.a. 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."

Kojima said he had been wanting to pass on development responsibilities to the "younger generation" on his team, and had been "trying to do so for quite some time." Platinum Games and it's penchant for action-slash was also eventually brought on board to help finish Revengeance in 2011.

"Before, I never could give complete responsibilities for other games, but for Revengeance, they are fully in control," he said. "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 hits PS3 and Xbox 360 February 19 in the US and February 22 in Europe. You can try out a demo for it on January 22.