A big question mark floats over the Metal Gear Solid community.

For all its mastery of portmanteau, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance nevertheless drew lukewarm ambivalence from gamers when it rose from the nether of development hell during this year's Video Game Awards on Spike TV. Boasting a new name and a new developer -- Bayonetta and Vanquish creator Platinum Games -- Rising's hack-and-slash overhaul defied the franchise's customary stealth-action gameplay.

Before you could say "nanomachines," Platinum Games co-founder Atsushi Inaba immediately took to Twitter clearing up "spurious" claims that his company accomplished what Kojima couldn't. "The artists at Kojima Productions gave their blood, sweat, and tears to bring the Metal Gear saga to life," he wrote. "The gap is immense. Mr. Kojima tossed his chips on our table, believing we could handle the task. In other words, he took a gamble."

Even publisher Konami felt the brushback after dropping “Solid” from the game's title as a signifier of its spin-off nature. Of course, the byproduct was an apparent disinclination to associate with such drastic differences -- and that's never a good thing. Now, a mini-documentary by the company hopes to clarify the whole debacle.

Like the franchise's notoriously tangled plot, the story behind Rising's journey to its current incarnation carries considerable complexity. Listen to members of Platinum Games and Kojima Productions --including series creator Hideo Kojima himself -- discuss why Rising was silently killed in 2010, the intricacies of the developer swap, and the reason for Metal Gear Ray's giant orange swords of death.