Now that Metal Gear Solid: Rising has been re-envisaged and re-established as Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, one can’t help but wonder how the original incarnation of Rising (particularly in relation to the game’s story) was actually structured. Before established Metal Gear developers Kojima Productions decided to re-imagine the project and collaborate with PLATINUMGAMES, Rising was almost certainly a very different game.
As you probably already know, originally Rising’s story was to take place somewhere between the events of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. However, now that Rising is now Rising “Revengeance”, this original story timeline has been revised, with Revengeance’s narrative now taking place after the events of MGS4.
Etsu Tamari, the lead writer at Kojima Productions on both the original Rising project and Revengeance, has since stated that given PLATINUM’s involvement with the project, the original Rising timeline and storyline was essentially and completely re-worked from scratch. As such, we may never know what KP actually had planned for Raiden and his story in respect of the original Rising project, despite Kojima Productions saying that the original story is on the “shelf” for now and will not be “throwing it away”. As it is, Revengeance is the only Raiden story that we will ever definitely know about.
Fast forward to last weekend and Quinton Flynn, the actor responsible for Raiden’s distinctive voice, tweeted that he was busy working with fellow voice actors John Cygan, Benito Martinez & Cristina Pucelli under the direction of Kris Zimmerman.
“Had the pleasure of working with John Cygan, Benito Martinez & Cristina Pucelli today under the direction of the esteemed Kris Zimmerman!”
All of these names, with the exception of Benito Martinez, can be linked back to the greater Metal Gear Solid franchise, leading TGL to believe that Quinton’s tweet was a reference to work he was doing on Revengeance. John Cygan is best known as the voice of Solidus Snake, Raiden’s adoptive father with whom Raiden served under as part of the “Small Boy Unit” during the Liberian Civil War. Raiden’s and Solidus’ stories are inherently linked, particularly in relation to Raiden’s child solider status as “Jack the Ripper” and the “White Devil”.
As for Cristina Pucelli, she is best known as the voice of Sunny Gurlukovic, daughter of Olga, captured by the Patriots at birth and subsequently rescued by Raiden before being taken into surrogate care by Otacon and Snake on the Nomad. Sunny debuted in MGS4.
The final name linked to Metal Gear is Kris Zimmerman, one of gaming’s most established voice directors; best known for her work on any number of Metal Gear games including MGS3: Snake Eater, MGS4: Guns of The Patriots, MGS: The Twin Snakes and MGS: Peace Walker. She is almost certainly attached to directing the English voices for Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance.
As it is, we’re suggesting (and guessing) that perhaps Solidus and Sunny are in some way involved in Revengeance, especially given that their respective voice actors just happen be recording with Raiden’s voice actor who JUST HAPPENS to be working with Metal Gear’s long established voice director. We are more than aware that given the post MGS4 status of Revengeance that it would not be possible for characters like Solidus to make an appearance. However, in saying that, there’s nothing to say that he isn’t involved in some kind of flashback sequence or something like that. Or maybe KP has figured out a way to bring Solidus back to life? Last year Hideo Kojima tweeted that he brought a dead character back to life. Maybe it’s Solidus? But it’s probably not. It’s also worth noting that both John Cygan and Cristina Pucelli could well be actually voicing completely different characters, as re-using voice actors for different characters is not uncommon in the MGS universe, for example Jennifer Hale (Emma Emmerich/Dr. Naomi Hunter), Vanessa Marshall (Olga/Strangelove) or even Richard Doyle (The Fury/Big Boss).
Armed with these assumptions we asked a trusted source once connected to the original “Rising” project before Revengeance to see if Quinton’s tweet meant anything. Our source was unable to confirm our guess work in relation to the voice actors name dropped in the tweet. However, TGL has since learned a couple of interesting pieces of information relating to Rising’s original story form pre-Revengeance.
TGL understands that at one point or another in Rising’s original development, the game featured TWO variations of the Raiden character. This information comes to us via our trusted source who worked on the original Rising before it was adjusted into Revengeance.
We are told that Rising originally featured TWO different variations of the character of Raiden, young Raiden and cyborg Raiden. The first Raiden has been described to us as a “young” Raiden akin to the character’s previous status as the deadly child solider “Jack The Ripper” and “White Devil” during the Liberian Civil War from 1989 onwards. The second Raiden is described as a robotic or “cyborg” character, almost certainly the Raiden we’ve all seen in the original E3 2010 gameplay trailer. Now, our source couldn’t confirm if the “young” Raiden character was ever going to be playable in Rising, but we do understand that two different actors had been cast to voice both young and cyborg Raiden characters. Who these voice actors are though, we were not told. Our source was unable to confirm whether or not any of the voice work or even if the “young” Raiden character has been transferred over to Revengeance.
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance was formally revealed at the Spike VGA’s last December. The game is being developed by PLATINUMGAMES, with Kojima Productions acting as publisher. No release date has yet been announced. A new trailer is due this April 30th. Head over to the official Rising website for more. The latest teaser trailer is below.
