Filed: Community, Games, PlatinumGames, Vanquish

Hi. I’m Noriyuki Otani, and I programmed the Gorgies, Burns, and friendly forces in Vanquish. I thought I would take the chance and write a blog and shed some light on the Gorgies themselves.

When I was creating the Gorgies, our “grunts”, the thing I paid most attention to was how to make sure that people wouldn’t realize that the Gorgies were actually going easy on them.

Going easy on the player might be the wrong way of putting it…

For example, when Gorgies faced off against the player, even though you would expect otherwise, you couldn’t fire upon them before they spotted and fired upon you. Even people who were used to shooters and great at aiming couldn’t do it. The worst would be trading attacks, and if you weren’t any good you would lose the exchange, which is guaranteed to stress you out. At Mikami-san’s suggestion, I tuned the game so that there is a gap before the Gorgies fire. It seems really simple, and I am sure that teams with tons of shooting game experience have plenty of know-how in this regard, but we started everything from zero, so this was just one of the many examples of us falling back on our tried-and-true method of “crash-and-build” development.

The Vanquish that emerged from all of these trials has tons of little tuning adjustments where the “game goes easy” to make things more fun to play. There aren’t very many places in the game where you will actually notice these things while playing, but every place we’ve put in these tweaks, we consider them as an act of love from us to you.

I hope you give Vanquish a whirl and enjoy the hell out of those bloody robots!

If you don’t want any of our love, you can get a real taste for what the robots can do to you by trying God Hard mode. I took great joy in not only powering them up in lots of different ways, but also making sure to remove their limiter. Even though our friends usually end up scrap metal, it would make me really happy if you give this mode even just a short try to see what the Gorgies are truly capable of.

26659 Comments http%3A%2F%2Fplatinumgames.com%2F2010%2F09%2F30%2Fgorgies-the-reds-that-have-you-seeing-red%2FGorgies%3A+The+Reds+That+Have+You+Seeing%C2%A0Red2010-09-30+01%3A13%3A40PlatinumGameshttp%3A%2F%2Fplatinumgames.com%2F%3Fp%3D2665 / / Read More

Tagged: Game Design, Gorgies, Noriyuki Otani, Playstation 3, Programming, PS3, SEGA, Shinji Mikami, Vanquish, Xbox 360

Filed: Community, Games, PlatinumGames, Vanquish

Hello, everyone! I’m Takahiro Fujii, and I am the designer for the graphical user interface (GUI) in Vanquish. The GUI is in this game spans everything from all of the menus, to the heads up display, to the interfaces that Elena uses in the cut-scenes of the game.

Vanquish’s GUI was made at 1280 x 720 pixel resolution. Working at HD resolutions is really a godsend for a designer, because things with high contrast, like text/symbols, can be clearly defined; however, there is a downside to the benefit of having such clearly defined outline around images and that is getting into a situation where the image starts looking bland. I wanted to do something to make sure this didn’t happen in Vanquish, so I made sure to include elements like dirt and distortion, noise, and an abundance of optical effects to make the interface seem a bit blurred and out-of-focus.

While blurring elements meant complicating some of the information displayed, when it came to the size and layout of the HUD, Mikami-san dictated that we needed to take into consideration how much we were throwing up on the screen and how fast the action was moving, as he wanted the player to be able to focus on the gameplay in the game. This led to an extremely functional design.

If you don’t pay attention, you probably won’t be able to tell the difference, as it really isn’t a flashy effect, but the change between putting effects on the interface and leaving things plain is really night and day. I plowed through my work with that belief in mind. Of course, when everyone is playing Vanquish, I don’t want you to even think about what I’ve written about here, and just enjoy the experience. As a creator, that would make me happier than anything.

265112 Comments http%3A%2F%2Fplatinumgames.com%2F2010%2F09%2F24%2Finterface-design-in-vanquish%2FInterface+Design+in%C2%A0Vanquish2010-09-24+02%3A19%3A47PlatinumGameshttp%3A%2F%2Fplatinumgames.com%2F%3Fp%3D2651 / / Read More

Tagged: Interface Design, PlatinumGames, Playstation 3, PS3, SEGA, Shinji Mikami, Takahiro Fujii, User Interface Design, Vanquish, Xbox 360

Filed: Community, Games, PlatinumGames, Vanquish

Hi. I’m Ippei Shiraki, sound designer on Vanquish.

I’ve never worked on an SF title before, so it was kind of a harrowing experience for me. While robots are pretty well known, I would have to say that they are still almost fictional in nature. At least they are to me. Industrial robots are made from combining existing items, such as motors, which means that I’d end up making sounds that sounded like things already in existence. However, the robots that attack you in Vanquish are sentient, and have their own AI. That meant the first order of business was creating more “human” sounding robots from scratch. For creatures that are “alive,” you tend to create sounds by putting effecting/changing up existing animal sounds, but in Vanquish I relied heavily on synthesizers to create something completely different. One of the members of our sound design team really love synthesizers, so I was able to hand off quite a bit of the enemy sound design duties to him. LOL.

Thanks to his effort, our enemies have a new sound unlike anything you’ve heard before.

Sam’s gun was also probably the most important sound in the game… Actually, I ended up having to remake sounds that had already been approved because of some differing opinions from other members of the development team. The important part was to make sure that the sound was pleasing to the ears and something that you didn’t get tired of. Having to remake something that you’ve already created is an incredibly difficult process; however, when you hear the sound in the game, even I must admit that the remade sound was superior to what I had originally. When you are creating something, you tend to put on blinders towards your own work. I realize that these are the times when the rest of the team’s opinions are really important. Not to be singing my own praises, but the heavy machine gun sounds really cool when you are in AR mode.

We more or less as a team approached the game with the main concept that it should be fun to play above all else, and the sound effects work to further this ideal. I really hope that the sounds startle you… and that you have a great time playing Vanquish.

26456 Comments http%3A%2F%2Fplatinumgames.com%2F2010%2F09%2F16%2Fthings-that-go-boom%2FThings+That+Go%C2%A0Boom2010-09-16+06%3A49%3A03PlatinumGameshttp%3A%2F%2Fplatinumgames.com%2F%3Fp%3D2645 / / Read More

Tagged: Gun Sounds, Ippei Shiraki, PS3, Shinji Mikami, Sound Design, Sound Designer, Vanquish, Xbox 360

Filed: Community, Games, PlatinumGames, Vanquish

Hello everyone. I’m Vanquish composer Erina Niwa. I’ve been on the Vanquish team for over 2 years now, so my memories of the start of development are a bit hazy these days. However, I’m going to do my best to recall what I can and give you some insider information about the music you will hear in Vanquish.

Vanquish, as you know, is a shooter with strong action and speed elements. As the world of Vanquish is set in a SF imagining of the near future, I realized that the game would definitely need heavy synth elements, and then went to work.

With a lot of Western TPS games, the soundtrack is either rarely used, or when it is used, it seems to lack punch, but one of the things that Mikami-san told me that he wanted for the Vanquish soundtrack was for the music to “be the backup dancers for the game.” As we developed the game, a clear sense of speed emerged, as did the game’s hook, so the background music had to match that. This all lead to the up-tempo, banging soundtrack in the game today.

Even within PlatinumGames, there were those who said that the soundtrack didn’t sound like a shooter soundtrack, but since Vanquish is so aggressive, we made the soundtrack more along the lines of something from an action game. It is a blending of genres, from techno, to industrial, to breaks, metal, jungle, and even some Hollywood style scoring.

Another thing Mikami-san said was, “Make sure it doesn’t end up P.N.03-esque.”

“Make it a battlefield. Make it militaristic,” he added. “The game may look like SF, but the soundtrack should be gritty and war-like.”

Having that SF-style feel of the near future but matching it with grittiness is something that is very hard to pull off at the same time with music, but I took the tracks and genres that we were already working on, and looked at how we could add the grittiness of war into these tracks. Then it was a matter of dissecting these key ideas, and reassembling them as music.

Actually, when I started thinking of militarism, it reminded me of the track that they used in the Advanced Wars commercial here in Japan, and even during production, that track would pop into my head from time to time. Those were the days… But I digress…

The game won’t be released for a little while longer (October 19 in North America, October 21 in Japan, and October 22 in EU/PAL territories), but I really hope you all get your hands on Vanquish and give it a try.

One more thing…

The Vanquish Original Soundtrack will be released in Japan on October 27, 2010. It’s all the intense music from the game, spread across a wonderful three disc set.

It also features tracks from our awesome collaborators on this project, Masafumi Takada, of The Silver Case, killer7, God Hand, and No More Heroes fame, and Masakazu Sugimori, composer on Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (GBA) and Viewtiful Joe (GC) amongst others. At 3990 yen, it is a bit pricey, but once you get great at the game and then start thinking the music was awesome, the soundtrack is the perfect companion!

263817 Comments http%3A%2F%2Fplatinumgames.com%2F2010%2F09%2F09%2Fthe-vanquish-soundtrack%2FThe+Vanquish%C2%A0Soundtrack2010-09-09+00%3A59%3A10PlatinumGameshttp%3A%2F%2Fplatinumgames.com%2F%3Fp%3D2638 / / Read More

Tagged: Big Beat, Electronica, Erina Niwa, Gabba, Industrial, Masafumi Takada, Masakazu Sugimori, PS3, SEGA, Shinji Mikami, Soundtrack, Vanquish, Xbox 360

Filed: Community, Games, PlatinumGames, Vanquish

Hi. My name is Tetsuya Sasano, and this is the first time that I’ve ever blogged, either professionally or privately. I was one of the background designers on Vanquish.

While I’ve been involved in creating stage backgrounds on numerous action titles, this is my first time working on a shooter, so I started out by playing many of the famous shooters out on the market.

After this research period, we entered into production, and Mikami-san had a few things he wanted to make sure we accomplished. The one of the most important of these requests was that the game feels good to play. Alongside the concept of having a speed-infused shooter, this element was something that was an absolute must, and it was also the most difficult request Mikami-san made of us.

The background team at first tried to up the visual quality by devoting large portions of memory to polygon and texture data. However, when we tried to add large numbers of enemy troops on to the screen, the game would slow down (as expected?), and it would degrade the feel of the game.

We also wanted to up the intensity of the battlefield by including plenty of allied characters fighting alongside of you, thus there was no choice but to go back to the drawing board on all of the stages so large numbers of these characters could be on screen.

Luckily, we were able to do our best to cut the fat off the stages without dropping the graphical quality, leaving them lean and mean, and making sure that we didn’t do anything to harm the way the game feels. (Of course, each member of the team had to go through hell to make this happen.)

There is literally a mountain of stories regarding how much work it was to get the stages into shape, but we will have to keep them secret for now, because I don’t want to spoil the fun. Hopefully there will be another chance to give you the inside story.

There are quite a few different stages in the game, so I hope you look forward to what we have in store with Vanquish.

You can expect some battles in the dark, like this one pushing through a tunnel section of the colony.

263215 Comments http%3A%2F%2Fplatinumgames.com%2F2010%2F09%2F02%2Fon-stage-design%2FOn+Stage%C2%A0Design2010-09-02+00%3A59%3A04PlatinumGameshttp%3A%2F%2Fplatinumgames.com%2F%3Fp%3D2632 / / Read More

Tagged: PS3, Shinji Mikami, Stage Design, Tetsuya Sasano, Vanquish, Xbox 360