Metal Gear visionary Hideo Kojima is a busy man, to say the very least. We’ll cover his extended involvement in his company’s key franchise in a separate story. Meantime it has been revealed that he’s overseeing production of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, which was announced at Konami’s E3 address last night.

Lords of Shadow is actually a three-way co-production between Konami Europe, a Spanish outfit called Mercurysteam Entertainment (Clive Barker’s Jericho, American McGee: Scrapland) and Kojima Productions.

If all that fills your brain with worrying images of too many chefs spoiling the broth, fear not. Lords of Shadows looks completely flipping awesome! Think Devil May Cry meets God of War 3. Now turn it up to 11, add the production values of a Hollywood blockbuster and a stellar cast to match. And we do mean stellar...

Heck knows how they did it or what it must have cost but Konami has managed to draft in some proper thesps to voice the action. We’re talking heavyweight Shakespearos Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellen, alongside Robert Carlyle, Jason Isaacs and Natasha McElhone. Hear them all enunciating their vowels and emoting like crazy people in the trailer we’ll be posting very shortly.

Lords of Shadow is every bit as gothic and moodily portentous as you want it to be. Complete with mad whip attacks, a dramatic orchestral soundtrack and, as you’ll see, hideous, hulking monstrosities a-go-go! “This is Castlevania. But not as you know it,” promises/threatens Konami Europe’s Dave Cox.

So that’s one to look out for on PS3 and Xbox 360 in 2010 – and it’s a mystery solved too. Check towards the end of the video and you’ll see the ‘mask’ that was appearing in the Kojima productions tease site. Aha!