A blog series about the development of Revengeance has been started on the Platinum Games site. The first blog is by producer Atsushi Inaba.

http://platinumgames.com/2012/12/13/the-rising-blog/

Excerpt:

At Platinum, we’re not so easily surprised. Still, I think the staff was pretty shocked when I told them, “We’re making Metal Gear Rising!” Kenji probably had a heart attack when I asked him, “Want to be the director? I need an answer right now.”

I really wanted to make this project happen, though. I remember all the plans I started making after I met with Kojima, to turn his proposal into a reality. In interviews I said, “I went for it because the thought of it excited me”, but I don’t want that to suggest I was simply impulsive.

What we at PlatinumGames make, if I were to say in short, can be defined by two words: “Pride” and “Dedication.”

Pride to think that, “If we make this, we can make it awesome!”
Pride to continuously expect more and more of ourselves.
Dedication to the principle that what we make should never disappoint our fans.
We want to be as sincere to those two words as possible.
That’s what PlatinumGames stands for.

However, this project introduced a new challenge: making something that Kojima Productions and Metal Gear fans everywhere would approve of. Kojima Productions believed in our talent as an action game maker, and we set out to meet to those expectations. Moreover, we strove to create something that exceeds the expectations of every Metal Gear fan. By the end, we had expanded the range of gameplay experiences we provide as a developer. It gave new meaning to our idea of dedication. That’s what you’ll find inside this project. That’s why I wanted to do it. No matter what.

But a game isn’t a game if it isn’t fun. Even with some dramatic “Developer: PlatinumGames!” announcement, if it isn’t fun, what’s the point? What really matters is that.

We only had a trailer for the VGAs, but with E3 and TGS, we were able to show our game off in a booth prepped for tons of fans to try out a demo of the game. Thankfully, the feedback from fans we received at both events was overwhelmingly positive. We were able to see the “dedication” end of our promise coming through. That being said, we knew we weren’t completely there yet.

This has nothing to do with the blog series but here's an interview from only a couple of days ago:

http://www.siliconera.com/2012/12/10/why-metal-gear-rising-revengeance-has-parrying-and-other-questions-for-platinumgames/

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance seems to have Kojima Productions style humor. There’s a scene in Denver where you turn around while a boss is lecturing Raiden about war and a soldier is petting a cat and there are those 3D cubes which reference the girly magazines from other MGS games.
Yuji Korekado, Creative Producer at Kojima Productions: You might think that it’s very Kojima Productions-esque, but all of the humor came out of PlatinumGames. We collaborated with them, but it usually came forth from their team. My favorite gag, you might have seen it in the realtime demo, where Raiden tries to put in a USB drive. [Laughs]

Speaking of stealth, Raiden can also sneak behind enemies to take them down and hide in cardboard boxes. That’s quite different from the concept of always moving forward, which you talked about earlier. Was it difficult to design levels for Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance with two different play styles – stealth and action?
Atsushi Inaba, Producer at PlatinumGames: The concept moving Raiden forward was the core design, but we wanted to give players options. We didn’t want players to say this game is only cutting, it could get dull after awhile. At PlatinumGames, when we were thinking about level design we wanted to give players an option if you go down this street you’re going to run into cyborgs and there will be heavy action with Raiden cutting them up. But, if you go this way you might be able to do stealth kills.
There are a lot of options per stage and there are things you can receive, items and whatnot, deepening on what route you go through. That adds replay value and we’re proud of that, as well. The path you take doesn’t matter, but in the end we hope our design offers a lot of play styles and will add to the value of the entire game.

Interesting. But the game was high on my list before anyways :]

The second blog is by director Kenji Saito:

http://platinumgames.com/2012/12/21/the-concepts-behind-rising/

The third, by designer Kenichirou Yoshimura:

http://platinumgames.com/2012/12/27/staying-true-to-metal-gear/

I'll have to come back and read these.

Fuck, I love Platinum so much.

The fourth, by character designer Cho:

http://platinumgames.com/2013/01/11/ruminations-on-character-design/

Here's one by character animator Hirokazu Takeuchi:

http://platinumgames.com/2013/01/17/reacting-to-blade-mode/

Up until now, most games that had dismemberment systems only allowed things to be cut in a predetermined fashion. Slicing the enemy in two, for example, would usually mean simply creating one animation of the upper body separating from the lower half.

We, however, have given the player freedom. We don’t know where they’re going to cut. They could choose to cut off a leg or an arm… they could cut horizontally, vertically, diagonally… At the starting stages of development, there were different ways we tried to express this endless amount of possible reactions through procedural animations. Heads would fly or just plop off without relying on any canned animations.

Ultimately, though, these programmed reactions just couldn’t cross the threshold to become something we thought fully conveyed the intensity of the action, so we decided to undertake the slow, daunting task of creating animations for every thinkable dismemberment possibility.

We’d cut the enemy one way, add an animation, cut from a different angle, add another animation, repeating this process until the end of development, until we eventually were satisfied with the array of reactions we were able to get from each enemy.

That's pretty damn impressive.

@Icemael said:

That's pretty damn impressive.

It's also why I'm now getting this game without knowing much of anything about MGS4.

thanks for reliably posting the cool stuff platinum puts on their site to the forums, I always look forward to their behind-the-scenes stuff

One by game designer Takahisa Taura:

http://platinumgames.com/2013/01/30/parrying-the-blade-mode/

@Icemael said:

Here's one by character animator Hirokazu Takeuchi:

http://platinumgames.com/2013/01/17/reacting-to-blade-mode/

Up until now, most games that had dismemberment systems only allowed things to be cut in a predetermined fashion. Slicing the enemy in two, for example, would usually mean simply creating one animation of the upper body separating from the lower half.

We, however, have given the player freedom. We don’t know where they’re going to cut. They could choose to cut off a leg or an arm… they could cut horizontally, vertically, diagonally… At the starting stages of development, there were different ways we tried to express this endless amount of possible reactions through procedural animations. Heads would fly or just plop off without relying on any canned animations.

Ultimately, though, these programmed reactions just couldn’t cross the threshold to become something we thought fully conveyed the intensity of the action, so we decided to undertake the slow, daunting task of creating animations for every thinkable dismemberment possibility.

We’d cut the enemy one way, add an animation, cut from a different angle, add another animation, repeating this process until the end of development, until we eventually were satisfied with the array of reactions we were able to get from each enemy.

That's pretty damn impressive.

That seems like a tremendous amount of work.

Programmer blog: http://platinumgames.com/2013/02/12/rising-and-the-role-of-the-programmer/

Some good insight. I didn't know programmers were as involved in the actual game design as they seem to be.

Character modeler blog: http://platinumgames.com/2013/02/13/a-cut-of-the-characters/

Music director blog: http://platinumgames.com/2013/02/14/geared-up-for-metal-and-some-dubstep/

Environmental concept artist blog: http://platinumgames.com/2013/02/15/concept-art-for-metal-gear-rising/

One by the guy in charge of background graphics: http://platinumgames.com/2013/02/27/risings-graphics-and-stages/

Programmer one was fascinating. I didn't even knew they had a say in the design, or had any leeway in how the whole thing comes together.

Platinum's blog is actually quite packed with stuff like this. They even had a mini show at one point. And Kamiya's Bayonetta video commentaries are just full of insane tidbits about its development.

Kenji Saito should totally start a playthrough / commentary after thins settle a bit , like Kamiya does.

http://platinumgames.com/2013/03/05/special-guest-scenario-writer-etsu-tamari/