By now, Metal Gear Solid fans have deduced the chronological period Rising will take place within the MGS timeline, and hypothesized on the dark, life-changing events in Raiden’s life that took place between his appearances in MGS2 and MGS4. What we could assume as a solo mission of self-preservation and survival has been confirmed by Kojima Productions’ Shigenobu Matsuyama, who reiterated the fact that Raiden’s story will be a completely separate journey from the Metal Gear timeline, and as such, we should not look forward to familiar friends or faces.
Speaking with Games magazine, Matsuyama, Metal Gear Solid: Rising’s creative producer, dismissed concerns of confusing newcomers to the series or weaving more plot strands into the intricate, and beautifully hand-made cashmere sweater that is the MGS series:
“To answer you 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 sago so much.”
“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.” he continued. “We don’t want to have it all tied up with the story from MGS2 or MGS4 and make it too complicated.”
Rumors have been abound regarding a likely cameo from former series star, Solid Snake, but from the sounds of it, this may very well be the only tie in to the Metal Gear Universe that we’ll see. The jury’s still out on whether or not this is a good thing.
[Source]
