Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance has been dated for early 2013.


Raiden's rise in Revengeance will be playable at E3.
The news came from Konami's pre-E3 press conference, in which the publisher also unveiled a new gameplay trailer for the Platinum Games-developed action title.

The game's story has changed places in the Metal Gear timeline. Originally, Metal Gear Solid: Rising was intended to take place before the events of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, showing how the character of Raiden made his transformation into the cyborg ninja of the 2007 PlayStation 3 hit. However, when Platinum Games was attached to the project, the time frame was moved to several years after Metal Gear Solid 4, to a time when cyborgs are becoming more commonplace in the world.

While Metal Gear Solid: Rising was originally intended to showcase a mix of stealth and action gameplay, Revengeance drops the stealth aspect to focus exclusively on action. Konami also dropped the "Solid" from the title to distance itself from the particular brand of stealth action people associate with the Metal Gear Solid series.

Mirroring a tactic that was used for Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and the original Zone of the Enders, a demo for Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance will be bundled with Zone of the Enders HD Collection when it launches later this year. The demo will also be released on Xbox Live and PlayStation Network at a later date, Konami revealed.

Series creator Hideo Kojima gave a teaser about the future of the Metal Gear series in the Konami presentation, talking about the new Fox game engine. "We're also very excited about the new Fox engine, which I can't say too much about for now, but please stay tuned." It was recently announced that the next generation of Pro Evolution Soccer will run on the engine.

For more on the Raiden-centric Metal Gear game, check out GameSpot's previous coverage of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance.