Hey. My name is Kenji Saito, I’m the director for Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance.
It’s been a year and a half now since I started working as Rising’s director.　Shaving that “R” in my head when we first assembled our team is a fond memory of mine. If you’re reading this, what I’m going to talk about might not cover a lot of new ground, but I’d like to take this opportunity to discuss the game’s concept.

When we were put in charge of Rising, our concepts for the game were something like this:
“Slicing that feels so good you could die.”
“A game with full blown, fast-paced action.”

We needed a few things to make this possible.
First of all, it was essential that we had fast response. As soon as you pressed a button, everything needed to respond with flawless timing: picture, sound, vibrations from the controller. Fortunately, this is one of PlatinumGames’s strengths. As you play Rising, you should feel everything in the game responding perfectly to your inputs.

Let’s go into some of the game’s more important features.

Blade Mode
This is a mode that allows free reign over Raiden’s blade. Players can enjoy simply slicing the enemy up, or carefully severing some extremities with pinpoint accuracy.  If you aim correctly and strike the enemy’s weak point… You’ll pull off a “Zandatsu”, allowing you to steal the enemy’s energy. 

Parry
Like I wrote above, I wanted Rising to be a game with full-blown action. My stance was that defending shouldn’t be just blocking. I wanted attacks to be blocked with attacks, and I wanted defense that opens up an opportunity to attack. That’s what it means to “parry” in Metal Gear Rising.

Execution
In Rising, if you land a series of normal attacks in a short time, you will temporarily disable your opponent. This allows you to perform Blade Mode in slow motion, so you can quickly take out even the more formidable foes. Keep attacking the enemy and the opportunity to finish them off in style will present itself. This is called an execution.

There are a lot of other techniques that add to the game’s action. “Defensive offense,” for example, is a quick slash at the enemy performed while sidestepping their attack. The list goes on and on… But actually, it is better to play it yourself than to hear me talk about it forever! The downloadable demo will be available early next month, so try out how it feels to slice and dice in Rising yourself.