Metal Gear Solid: Rising missed E3 2011. Very strange, especially when the game was announced two years prior at the very same event. After two years, we expect progress, not absence. Now we know why.
Kojima Productions actually had canned the project after the staff was undecided on the game's core focus. But Platinum Games swooped in with a Vanquish-style slide to save the day.
Platinum Games, the developers behind Bayonetta and Wii-exclusive MadWorld, took the reigns when the game was in a 50%-completed state and are responsible for dropping the "solid" from the title. And they were the ones that approached Kojima with a concept for "a game where it feels so good to chop things up that you would die".
Have you seen the VGA trailer? Are you glad they saved the game, or should they have just left it to die?
[Source]
