What's Going on with Metal Gear: Rising? Is It Okay?

This past August, I asked a very simple question: Where the hell is Metal Gear: Rising? It's now mid-November, and the game surfaced briefly, with a teaser trailer hinting at some sort of Rising announcement at the Spike VGAs.

Oddly, it was revealed this week that the game's producer, Shigenobu Matsuyama, was dumped. Metal Gear Producer Ken Imaizumi tweeted (via AndriaSang9 that the producer is Yuji Korekado, who's been working on the HD versions of mecha game Zone of the Enders.

The game, which stars character Raiden, is supposedly different from the standard Metal Gear games. It is apparently designed with the concept of "slashing" and "take", or "Zan-Datsu", to complement traditional MGS stealth.

The concept was that Raiden could slice enemies up several different ways and then take things from them.

However, according to a report on website The Snake Soup (via Eurogamer), Konami trademarked "Zan-Datsu", but has since abandoned the trademark, leading some to wonder if it is even in the game anymore.

And with Matsuyama, the producer who was apparently behind Zan-Datsu gone, it doesn't seem like it.

At the Spike VGAs next month, Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima will show off new gameplay and address "rumors" and discuss the "truth".

I've been picking my brain for rumors. I guess it's rumor and speculation that the cut-and-take elements have been taken out of the game. Maybe this is what Kojima will address. If it is, saying you haven't taken a feature out of your games sounds extremely dull.

The other rumor surrounding Rising, besides the ones that Konami is having major problems developing it, was that Platinum Games, the studio behind Bayonetta, had taken over development duties. However, Platinum Games explicitly told Kotaku that they were not making Rising. And Platinum Games wouldn't lie would it?

But maybe, and stay with me here, maybe Platinum Games really isn't making it. Maybe Platinum Games is helping. Helping is not making. And that, by mere semantics, isn't lying.
