Today I was in a Castlevania event in my city (Barcelona, Spain). There was a Konami guy (Product manager, or something like that) talking about the game:
-Konami US, Konami EU and Konami JP had a contest to select a project which developed in each region was going to be the next-gen Castlevania
-They know it was going to be released as a Castlevania game before it was greenlighted, even it was firstly just announced as Lord of Shadow due to marketing
-Mercury Steam had free creative freedom since the start of the production
-Mercury Steam had the plot and design ready before the production started, only real minor changes were made
-They submitted the builds, Konami pro just mentioned some comments, never asked for a mandatory change
-Both Mercury Steam and Konami are really happy with the game, they are working in 2 DLC to be released late 2010 and early 2011
-Almost all the tech stuff is from Mercury Steam, but Kojima Pro. shared some little stuff, like facial animation related tech
-Kojima and Kojima prod. visited the team several times but never worked as designer or producer in the strict role, they just overviewed the project and shared some comments and suggestions
-360 was the lead SKU :lol WTF???