You know seeing this made me realize just how weird Kojima can be.
I mean he made this guy for crying out loud

You think that would have clued me in.

Kojima wasn’t really involved in the production of Rising, though since it was developed by PlatinumGames, after all. (Technically, he was more involved for the first few drafts of it, which was originally going to be about playing as The Boss, but his team wasn't making progress so they switched the focus to Raiden but couldn't mesh stealth with hack'n'slash so they gave it over to PlatinumGames.) Like, he was “executive producer”, but that’s basically a fancy title for “owns the game but is too busy (making Peace Walker) to actually contribute much of anything to work on it.”