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Last Time Up

December 13th, 2010 by

VANQUISH

Filed: Community, Games, PlatinumGames, Vanquish

Well, this is the last entry for “my blog”…

For this entry, I think I’ll let you in on something that went on behind the scenes, and that is what we originally wanted Vanquish to become.

In our original vision for Vanquish, no one was actually inside Sam’s suit. Instead, it was a remotely operated robot with three different pilots who would take turns controlling the unit from afar.

(These are character designer Makoto Tsuchibayashi’s original designs.)

The robot would change forms according to the pilot in charge, as each pilot had been specially trained in areas such as shooting, melee, or hover and snipe. This single robot was capable of being battle effective in a variety of situations. I thought we could make something interesting out of how these three different pilots interacted with each other, much like Kamen Rider Den-O. This idea died a quick death early in the project, but personally, I still think the idea has its merits.

When making a game, there are plenty of ideas like these that get rejected, but they build up and can end up finding their way back, like in a sequel for instance, so you can never say that an idea is completely out of bounds. I don’t know what I will be making next, but considering how fickle I am, it will probably end up being a game completely different from Vanquish.

Well, until we meet again, in the realm of the video game.

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Working as a Game Programmer

November 25th, 2010 by

VANQUISH

Filed: Community, Games, PlatinumGames, Vanquish

Hello, I’m lead programmer on Vanquish, Kiyohiko Sakata.

It’s been about a month since Vanquish hit the streets; is everyone is having fun with the game?

I wanted to write this blog entry about what it is like to work as a game programmer. I think that people have a vague idea of what game programming is like, as some sort of difficult job where you just write a whole bunch of code that makes the computer work.

Of course, they are right. Most of the job is staring at a computer screen and writing code. If we consider what sort of code gets written, there is a nearly endless list of different types, and in making a game, these stretch from the tools needed for artists to the development environment needed for game designers to create the game itself. There really is code is in every direction.

But to accomplish an endless list of work, you have to establish a set of clear goals. If you try to pour all of your strength into everything at the same time, all you will end up making is some wishy-washy junk, so you have to figure out where to focus your efforts and what challenges you want to step up to. Doing this allows you to create something of incredibly high quality. Also, if you have too many goals, it won’t work out, as many failed projects fail because they either did a poor job of setting the bar or they were simply too ambitious.

We had two goals for Vanquish. One was to make a true-to-form third person shooter. The other was to develop this game as a multiplatform title for PS3 and Xbox 360.

Since we are a company that has created many action games, we didn’t really have a collective knowledge on how to make a TPS, so we approached initial production as an extension of creating an action game. However, we quickly found this wasn’t going to pound out. The way AI works in a shooter is a different beast, so we played all the major titles made overseas as research, read white papers written by foreign developers, and even talked with some of them directly during development of the game. Each individual enemy’s AI is important in the overall scope of a TPS’s AI, but so is situational awareness of the stage and scene that is playing out. To strengthen this, we created a system that gave us minute control over the situations in the game, making the effort put into the tool chain and development on Vanquish far greater than the norm for us.

Of course, the foundation for the AI lies in our core of our action game skills, so while the game is a “real” TPS, you can also enjoy an action-game-esque feeling, which I am proud to say makes our game a fun experience that is probably something that you don’t see elsewhere.

As for multiplatform development on the PS3 and Xbox 360, the most difficult part about making the same game for two platforms is the technical differences between those two pieces of hardware. Both systems have places where they excel and are deficient, and even if you set out to make exactly the same game on both, you may end up developing to the least common denominator and ending up with a mediocre game on both platforms.

This isn’t a problem if you can fit everything you wanted to make into this lowest common denominator, but we wanted to do a lot with Vanquish, and this type of development quickly showed its limits, so we had to make some decisions on how to move forward. We decided to work on the places where the hardware exceled, then we put a huge amount of energy towards compensating for the places where each piece of hardware is lacking, remembering that the most important thing was to maintain the same visual look and feeling to the gameplay.

This was the hardest goal we set for Vanquish, and with the title being our first shot at PS3 development (we had no prior know how in this area), I was honestly worried as to whether the bar was set too high. We had a really talented staff on the game, but even then, we still had to go outside the company to some really talented engineers at SEGA and elsewhere to help us make up for any areas where our technical expertise was lacking. They stayed with us for a few months, and thanks to their help, we were able to finish up production. As a result, we ended up meeting our goals with a very high quality product, and I feel we were able to pass on that product to gamers around the world.

Finally, I wanted to thank each and every one of you who have played Vanquish. For those who haven’t played it yet, you obviously have some interest if you are on this blog, so I really hope you give the game a shot. At the very least, I am confident in recommending the game as something you will not regret playing, so definitely give it a try!

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The Art Pipeline in Vanquish

November 22nd, 2010 by

VANQUISH

Filed: Community, Games, PlatinumGames, Vanquish

Hello and good day. I’m Kenji Irie, an artist on Vanquish.

Vanquish was my first gig in the highly desirable game industry, and I was able to work on a big game right out of the gate, with a really fun team to boot.

For Vanquish, I worked on backgrounds towards the beginning of the game, and the main vehicles and space ships during the latter half. At the end of the project, I worked on promotional art pieces. I think you’ve most likely seen my work in the DARPA logo, the friendly and enemy transport ships, and Burns’s flagship at the beginning of the game. Amongst those, it was great fun to make the enormous objects we threw into the stages, like Burns’s flagship, because of just how much presence they have on-screen.

There are lots of things I’d like to tell you about Vanquish’s development, and I’d like to start by giving you a look at how our art pipeline worked.

When making some of the promotional art for Vanquish, we used the base in-game models and worked with them further in 3D software packages to create new images that let you into the game’s world a bit deeper.

The in-game visuals are more than adequate; however, if you were to blow it up and print it, you need much higher resolution. Also, there has been a rash of really high level art assets being put out by some rival titles. To make sure Vanquish didn’t play second fiddle, I thought that I needed to make sure everything was set up perfectly and retouched.

Art Pipeline 1
First, I took a composition drawn by Usui-san, one of our concept designers, and created to be an art asset. Then, with the help of other team members, I decided how the pose and composition of the work should look in 3D and finalized the layout.

So using this as a base, I refined the pose and composition of the shot.

Art Pipeline 2
Rendering out a single frame of a model at this high quality would take too much time, so I split up things into elements and rendered them individually.

Finalized layout from the 3D package.

Art Pipeline 3
At first, the atmosphere of the work and the details are still a bit rough, so I use a painting program to go in and add small touches/retouches to the work.

This is a before and after of the retouch process. You can see things look more atmospheric.

Art Pipeline 4
Here I keep on adding in lighting, atmospheric elements, and other various effects to make the shot pop.

This is the finished image. You can tell it has changed a lot from the original data.

Art Pipeline 5
For a large image, it is easy for there to be over one hundred layered individual elements. I keep playing with tweaks to this really complicated data pool as long as time allows, finally producing the fixed art asset.

A look at the layers of the image.

I took great care in creating all of the art assets for Vanquish, such as character images, that found their way into magazines and the game’s homepage.
I spent time to add a lot of little details into things, especially in places like the exterior materials and parts of the robots, so once you are done with the game, I hope you turn your attention to these places.

It has been a month since Vanquish was released, so even if you’ve completed the game, there is still plenty to do between the Tactical Challenges and God Hard mode, so make sure you give them a try! As for me, I finally completed everything in the game! I can’t even write the number of continues it took me to beat God Hard… LOL.

Well, that’s it for now. Until next game, have fun!

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Putting a Face to Vanquish

November 11th, 2010 by

VANQUISH

Filed: Community, Games, PGTV, PlatinumGames, Vanquish

Hi all, I’m Vanquish facial animator, Masanori Takashima.

It’s been a month since the game was released, huh?
I suppose that those of you who have become captive to the exhilaration of traversing (gliding) across the battlefield are taking a crack at God Hard mode or possibly going after all the achievements/trophies. For those of you who haven’t played the game, I hope you make Vanquish a part of your holiday treats. We will be waiting for you on the adrenaline filled battlefield.

Anyways, that intro got a bit long in the tooth, so I’ll get to the topic at hand – facial animation in Vanquish.

Let me start by explaining the nuts and bolts of facial animation. I was in charge of making sure that the character model’s face could show expression by setting up a facial controller and then animating the face. It is a very specialized, almost geeky field; however, I am incredibly passionate about the challenge it provides.

When people try to understand other people, they rely on their appearance, the tone of their voice, their behavior, and their expressions. Amongst those, the face is incredibly important because it transmits expressions as visual signals. These signals show the depth of one’s humanness, from changes in feelings, to thoughts, personality, and even sometimes lies. Furthermore, humans are able to detect slight changes in expressions and guess at their subject’s feelings. It is truly a wonderful ability, and all the gamers have this trait, so to make sure that they understand each character’s individual expressions, you need to have the right animations, as well as an easy-to-use, robust facial controller. It’s a job that takes perseverance, perseverance, and then some more perseverance, but the minute you see life breathed into a character, it is addicting!

So here you go, recruits… Vanquish!

To make the player feel as if the characters in Vanquish are real, living human beings, we wanted to have a more realistic touch to the facial animations. Instead of trying to fill things with idiosyncratic animations, we decided to go with an approach that separated things into rough animation categories. Our plan was to come to grips with the general framework of all of the characters over the course of the game, then give them out of the ordinary expressions (or perhaps their true colors) at key moments, providing a hint as to where they were heading. Put simply, we wanted the characters to hit the beats in the story and turn things on their heads.

For instance, Sam is usually a cool, smoldering character, with a cigarette casually in one hand; however, when Burns doesn’t just forsake his troops, he smiles. On the other hand, his look of bitterness at seeing men left behind, or the shock when something emerges from a certain character’s chest, were all points where we wanted to lock down the ebb and flow of his character arc and give him a bit more human emotion.

Burns is normally a powerful, rough and tumble guy, and when he talks we wanted to make sure he reinforces the image of a tough as nails drill sergeant type at all times. Yet, his fiercely sheepish face when Sam jokingly welcomes him back from the dead, or the change in the look of his eyes when talking with Sam or seeing the battlefield, are interwoven with his desire to suppress his varied emotions from coming to the surface.

Elena calmly and indifferently explains the state of the battle during the game, and we wanted her to seem like the elite, convincing support role that she fills. She works to hold in her emotions, and is careful to make sure that to the best of her abilities she didn’t end up seeming sexy. However, there are places where her true colors shine through.

She gets irritated when Sam rants, and she can’t hold back when the danger continues on for too long. When Elena is verbally dressed down by Burns, all she can muster is a “Sorry,” but you can see in her face that she doesn’t really think she was wrong. Another one of the things we did for Elena, at my request, was giving her an animation during a scene where she runs her hands through her hair even though she is hard at work in her support role. I was looking for a place where a career girl would make sure that her hair looked good while she was working. At least that was my justification for it. And when I found the scene, it fit perfectly.

Even if you are playing through the game again, skipping the cutscenes, or if you’ve taken a step back after completing Vanquish once, I would love it if you took this opportunity to step back into the world of Vanquish once again. Until next time.

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Telling the Story in Vanquish: Cutscenes

November 9th, 2010 by

VANQUISH

Filed: Community, Games, PGTV, PlatinumGames, Vanquish

Hello. My name is Kunihiko Tsuda and I was in charge of creating the cutscenes for Vanquish.

With a game a speedy, well-paced game like Vanquish, we had to take care to make sure that cutscenes didn’t bring down the tempo of the experience. Normally, cutscenes take a game’s script and expand upon them with direction and ideas; with Vanquish, the focus was on two main types of scenes – the areas where we wanted to show incredibly explosive shots, like the action scenes and opening, and scenes where we needed to push the game forward with exposition. Ultimately, there was a good variety in the scenes when you look at the total volume of what we created.

This post contains content intended for mature audiences. Click more to verify your age.

More…

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Balancing a game like Vanquish

October 28th, 2010 by

VANQUISH

Filed: Community, Games, PlatinumGames, Vanquish

Hi, I am Junichi Oka, one of the game designers on Vanquish. I was also in charge of checking the strategy guides that were produced for the game.

Speaking of Strategy guides, I would often look at western guide books while we were producing the game. Since it was my first time working on a shooter, and I didn’t really know where to begin for just about everything, I did a lot of studying.

This is our stocked reference room. Filled with the helpful knowledge of those who have walked this path before!

Once the game started taking shape, I didn’t really look at them anymore; instead, it was time to take our own route through things. One of the reasons was because the game was so fast that there was no way traditional TPS level design would match the tempo we were after. If you haven’t seen what I mean about the game being fast, please download the demo of the game and give it a try!

Vanquish is a game where we couldn’t allow anything that would harm either the speed or the strategy required to play the game. We made the game so you couldn’t just hide under cover, but you also couldn’t recklessly move forward without dying. And we never forgot that it wasn’t an action game, it was a shooting game. For those of you who are playing the game and getting stuck, keep those principles in your mind and I think things will go better for you.

Move too far forward in the fight and you’ll soon be a sandwich topping – Swiss cheese, perhaps. Kinda works like the real world.

Vanquish is a game that rewards you putting time into it. What may seem like an impossible situation can be overcome easily by studying the terrain and cover points, and then picking/changing your strategy. We made the game so there is never an instance where you can say “This is it!” like there was only one right way of doing things. Instead, I think it is a game where you can look at someone else play and want to steal away the controller thinking, “No. This is how I would do it.” So, please, steal the controller from the person next to you!

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Narrative Design in Vanquish

October 25th, 2010 by

VANQUISH

Filed: Community, Games, PGTV, PlatinumGames, Vanquish

Hi. I’m JP, one of the writers on Vanquish. Normally, I fill a role as translator; however, on Vanquish, I also wrote some scenes in the script, added in most of the naming/jargon, and tried to bring that PG flavor to the script.

Approaching the story to Vanquish was an interesting endeavor. It isn’t often that you sit in a room with the directors of Resident Evil and Code Veronica and get asked your opinion about the story. One of these points was the opposing force in the game. Our initial candidate was China, but ultimately we went with the Russians. I’ve noticed some people on the net claim that Russia is clichéd as an enemy force, but it really is the only logical conclusion. Vanquish is based on an extension of our current world into the future, so the original plan of a Chinese enemy makes very little sense. China owns most of the United States debt, and the US buys most of China’s manufactured goods. When there is money to be made, people tend to find ways not to fight. Russia, on the other hand, makes perfect sense. Over half of all Russian exports to the US are petroleum products, so in a resource crunch, the economic ties that bind Russia to the US would be severed, allowing them to attack. After all, all wars are essentially about resource control.

Another reason I really pushed for Russia as an enemy is because I really enjoy the pseudo-Cold War nostalgia that nation-on-nation conflicts, especially with Russia, brings about. It’s got that great G.I. Joe sense of good guys taking on bad guys, which plays directly into the style of dialogue we were going for in Vanquish. In essence, Vanquish is tinged with parody, but not the point of being overt. I read a review that said, “It’s hard to tell whether it is taking the piss or not, which in itself may well be the intention.” Many of the dialogue lines in Vanquish are way over-the-top, but then again, you are talking about a group of super-powered space marines attacking a colony the size of a small city in space. I think it would be incredibly strange if they played things overly straight faced, so why not have fun with things? Why not make the characters aware of not only the ridiculousness of the situation, but also the varied cultural influences that lead to the creation of a game like Vanquish. My intent, at least with the English script, was not fan service, but rather making sure the game never forgets what it is – a game. There are plenty of companies working towards the serious. We never forget we are making games. I love that. As that same review said, “We weren’t sure if we were laughing at it, or with it, but we were definitely laughing.” Perfect.

That being said, Vanquish is a bit serious. When I first went through the completed script outline, I realized that what Hiroki Kato, our lead script writer, had come up with was ultimately a morality tale on the frailty of one’s best intentions. All of the characters in Vanquish are rough around the edges, with motivations that conflict with the idealized world they are striving to create. If you read into it a bit, it draws many parallels with the attacks French philosopher Voltaire launched against fellow philosopher Gottfried Leibniz and his concept of optimism. While I don’t think Kato-san explicitly set out with Voltaire in mind, it was nice to be able to strengthen these parallels in some of the naming and situations in the game. I hope you all have fun trying to find these references.

Finally, a bit on the English voice acting in the game: I was incredibly privileged to work with top notch people across the board on the English script. It is always fun to be the dumbest one in the room, because you have so many people to look up to. From my editor on the script, Alexander O. Smith, to our voice director, Kris Zimmerman (of Bayonetta and Metal Gear Solid fame), to our incredibly talented cast, it was an awesome experience working with everyone. It isn’t often you can bring Gideon Emery (Sam), Steve Blum (Burns), Marc Worden (Zaitsev), Kari Wahlgren (Elena), Lee Meriweather (Winters), and Benito Martinez (Candide) together on one project, but we were able to pull it off, and got some amazing performances as a result. We also realize that many of you want to play in your native languages, so we’ve included Japanese, French, Italian, German, and Spanish voices as well. I know there are plenty of fans with a preset bias towards the Japanese language track for whatever reason, but I really urge you to set aside your biases and try out the game in your native language. English was the lead language on Vanquish, but all of the languages were equally important to us, so don’t dismiss things as a “dub”, because you will just end up missing out on some great performances by some really talented actors. Mikami-san has already spoken about how much he loves Gideon’s voice as Sam, and I am a huge fan of Japanese voice actor’s performance for Zaitsev. For a little bit of fun, here are my favorite outtakes from the studio:

I’m really looking forward to hearing what you all have to say about the game, so say hi to me on Twitter (@pg_jp) or hit up our message boards at http://forums.platinumgames.com/ and let us know what you think!

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Vanquish – On Sale Now!!

October 22nd, 2010 by

VANQUISH

Filed: Community, Games, PlatinumGames, Vanquish

Hi everyone. Vanquish Producer Atsushi Inaba here.

Finally, Vanquish is on sale now!!

It is coming out globally at almost the exact same time…
From today on, Sam will be boosting around like crazy all over the world.
From today on, Sam will be triggering AR mode all over the world.
From today on, San Francisco will be blowing up. All over the world.

So, what do I have to say for those of you who have bought Vanquish and are turning on your consoles right now?

Once you’ve done the tutorial and come to grips with Sam’s Augmented Reaction Suit (ARS), you are going to be thrown into a battlefield where the bullets are coming in all directions. Your heart will race and your controller will be wrapped in sweaty palms, all because of the intensity of what plays out on-screen. “This is war.”

But once you play the game for a while, you will be captivated by the power of the ARS suit, and it will put you in the game. Then it will be nothing to flash across a pitched battlefield, exhilaratingly eliminating enemies along the way…

Of course, some of you might also find that it is a bit hard to stay on target. If you’ve ever played a shooter before, you shouldn’t have too much trouble, but for those of you who are less experienced in the genre, try Casual Auto, with its liberal auto-aim function, and you should be able to fight your way through the battlefield with little worry. This mode is actually fun on its own, so give it a try…

Finally, for those of you who may have already tried the Vanquish Challenge Mode demo, it is sort of a “condensed battlefield,” different from what you would find in the game. Actually, the Challenge Mode demo is one part of the Tactical Challenge Mode in the final game, content that you unlock as you proceed through the campaign mode. This mode is INCREDIBLY addictive, and it will keep its hooks in you for a long time, so once you’ve got your skills polished in the campaign, you will have plenty of fun playing Tactical Challenges long after the story has been told.

With that, I hope you all get sucked in and have a blast playing Vanquish every day!

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About the Demos

October 15th, 2010 by

VANQUISH

Filed: Community, Games, PlatinumGames, Vanquish

So everyone, did you get a chance to play the Vanquish demos?

There have actually been two Vanquish demos so far in Japan. The Vanquish Official Demo – Velocity Attack was taken from the campaign mode of the game, while the Vanquish Challenge Mode Demo (currently available in Japan) is part of an unlockable extra mode. We called the stage used in Velocity Attack room number 110, and I have to admit that I forgot what the code name was for the challenge mode room. (I have the habit of being the guy who forgets everything the minute development is over…)

Room 110 is pretty much exactly as you will find it in the game. In the full version of Vanquish, you will have the opening cinematic (the destruction of San Francisco and the infiltration of the colony), as well as the initial entrance into the colony with its baptism by enemy fire.

The stage used in the Vanquish Challenge Mode Demo is actually a map from the actual game, but the enemies that appear are completely different. (Wait until you see the enemy drill robot in the final game, it is awesome!) In the full version, you will get a boss fight pretty soon after this area, and I really love the cutscene that you see at that point. It is quite cool.

Even with the demo version, Vanquish is a game that is a blast to play again and again. I think it will be interesting to see the competition that sprouts up amongst skilled players playing the final version of the game. Vanquish isn’t a game that trails off towards the end, so you can expect a consistent level of quality to the very last bullet. Look forward to it next week!

 

 

 

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The Feel of the Game

October 7th, 2010 by

VANQUISH

Filed: Community, Games, PlatinumGames, Vanquish

Hello everyone. I’m Takaaki Yamaguchi and I was the animator for the enemies in Vanquish. I’d like to give you an inside look on my work on the game.

Have you all given the demo a try? If you haven’t, definitely give it a shot. It might take you a little bit to get used to the controls in the game, but I think screenshots and video don’t do the sense of speed and exhilaration in the game justice.

Of course, this is because we followed the direction of Mikami-san from the beginning of production…

We started by knowing rejecting what had become the calm, expected elements of shooters:

“Remember the map, find a good spot, hide, then move.”

“If you get discovered, move to another hiding spot”

“Fire before you are fired upon.”

Instead, we went with something only aggressive words could describe:

“No running away! Move forward!”

“I don’t want people crawling along or hiding under cover!”

“You’ll dodge bullets with a ‘woosh’!”

With that direction in mind, I went about creating the enemy animations and it dawned on me that I wasn’t really creating shooter animations as much as I was creating action game animations.

By the way, animating something for a game is not just about simply making something look cool when it moves. When working on a player character, you have to make sure that there is a direct response to user controls so that things feel good, but with enemies, you need to build in instants where the player knows that they are about to be attacked. If you’d like to know more about this, Eijiro, lead animator on Bayonetta, wrote about Enemy Animations on the Bayonetta blog. Check out his post here: http://platinumgames.com/2009/05/17/rooting-for-the-enemy/

These hints are incredibly important to an action game. For instance, in the Vanquish demo, you face off against the giant Argus robot. The Argus has many different kinds of attacks; we made “warning animations” not just for the melee attacks, but for all of the firearm attacks the robot can execute, as well.

At first, you will probably be completely absorbed in the fight, but after fighting the Argus a few times, you should be better able to determine what attack is coming next from these warnings. By the way, there are even attacks that can hit you behind cover. If you think about it, that is pretty much against established shooter convention, but if you pay close attention to your foe and get the timing right, you can dodge these attacks. Once that attack is over, that is your opening to repay the favor. You could say that this is the ebb-and-flow of an action game. Pulling this off with grace becomes very addictive, and you’ll soon be completely absorbed in the action.

So that’s Vanquish. Personally, I love action games, and the animations I created for Vanquish are something that I can truly be proud of. You can pick your difficulty level in the game, so I hope that lots of different people play the game. Furthermore, it would be great if even those of you who think you aren’t good at action games take what I’ve written here into account and give the game a try. You might find that you end up loving what you experience.

Finally, this doesn’t really have anything to do with my blog, but our character modeler, Yoshifumi Hattori, mentioned a robot dog in his post on the blog here: http://platinumgames.com/2010/08/05/the-augmented-reaction-suit-system/

Well, I went digging and found some of the animation we created for the robot terrier.

This reminds me of when we had a robot-dog-missile attack in the game…

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