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MGS Rising Won’t Have Many Returning Characters

Even though Metal Gear Solid Rising will technically take place between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Metal Gear Solid 4, the game will evidently avoid referencing either as much as possible -- including bringing back many familiar characters from the MGS series. Speaking with U.K. magazine gamesTM (via Connected Consoles), Kojima Productions’ Shigenobu Matsuyama said returning characters will be kept to a minimum in order to make Rising’s story easier to follow for new players.
"To answer your question about returning characters, we’re probably not going to show too many characters in Rising because, since it’s a new part of a series, we don’t really want to refer to and dwell upon the Metal Gear saga so much," Matsuyama said. "We want newcomers to the game to come in and play freely without needing to know and understand the background of the whole Metal Gear Solid universe. We don’t want to have it all tied up with the story from MGS2 or MGS4 and make it too complicated."

Despite Rising’s status as an "interquel," Matsuyama has previously indicated they intend to make it the beginning of a franchise all its own, with its own direct sequels in the future -- which only further raises the confusing question of where sequels to an interquel will take place chronologically? Then again, if Rising will barely touch on the MGS storyline, maybe such chronological questions simply won’t matter.

Metal Gear Solid Rising -- which is being developed for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 -- still doesn’t have a set release date.