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.

Hi. My name is Hideaki Nakata, and I was in charge of Vanquish’s PS3 Engine as well as overall engine tuning. I thought I would write a blog entry to give you some insight into the system programming on Vanquish.

So what is system programming? It is actually hard to explain, but it is best described as the foundation of the game. To use a car analogy, it is the engine behind things… This is why we use the term game engine as well. Looking at it from the top down, the system programming is everything to do with the game that doesn’t involve actual gameplay (everything other than the code running the player/enemies, etc.). But still, a bit hard to explain exactly…

For the engine powering Vanquish, I tried focusing on all-out quantity. Shinji Mikami, the director of Vanquish, made a number of requests. “I want the game to look unlike anything else out there! I want our battlefields to have the overwhelming feeling of a real battle.” I realized the only way we are going to pull this off is with “quantity.” More and more enemies are going to have to keep appearing, more and more bullets are going to have to fill the air, bigger and bigger explosions are going to have to ring out… We would need an engine that could pull that off while still keeping the characters and backgrounds rich in detail.

While the Vanquish engine is based on work done on Bayonetta, it was for that reason that we had a lot of work to do changing things for this project. For instance, we completely rewrote the renderer, implementing a technique known as “deferred rendering.” I think the new renderer turned out quite well.

We also tuned the title so that if you play Vanquish on the PS3 or the Xbox 360 you should notice little to no differences. Even the developers on the Vanquish team have a hard time telling the two versions apart at a glance… So no matter which console you have, you have nothing to worry about!

Hi. Takeo Kido here again. I was in charge of effects on Vanquish.

For this blog, I thought I would talk a little bit about Boosting in the game.

One of the unique gameplay elements in Vanquish is the main character, Sam, and his ability to boost at high speed across the stage. Our original development name for this feature was simply “sliding.”

During production, it was said that moving across the stage wasn’t fun, and that we needed something both visually appealing, and relevant as a special gameplay element to spice things up. That’s when we came up with the idea…

“Why don’t we modify the big protrusions around the hips like this, then shove some jets out of the back and have him go flying around! That’d be cool. “

“And if we made it so that jets could fly out of multiple directions, it would be a great excuse to have Sam do some really unbelievable actions that would look visually stunning, don’t you think?”

And so it went…

The effects team went to Sam’s modeler, Hattori-san, who did a great job of adding on the little pluses that we were looking for, and the end result is the Boost function you see now. Making games at PlatinumGames is often like this, where the staff start rolling with ideas and don’t stop until they’ve made their way into the game.

Boost may stand out most for its enabling of high speed movement, but it is also integral when Sam is jumping over things, or when he does other, more subtle, quick actions. Moreover, they don’t stand out as much as the jets on his legs, but Sam also has the same jets on his arms, which allow him to put even more force behind his punches. Kind of like a rocket punch where the hand doesn’t go flying off! It looks like something dangerous enough that if he misused the function of the suit, Sam would end up with two dislocated shoulders.

There are tons of these little details in Sam’s ARS suit. If you are into this sort of thing, keep your eyes peeled!

Hello everyone. Thank you all for reading the blog here. My name is Takeo Kido, and I was in charge of the special effects for Vanquish.

Many of you may be wondering what I mean by effects. Simply put, effects can be something in-game that we render to represent explosions, crashes, fragments, smoke, fire, sparks, jets, lighting, bullets, shell casings, missiles, beams, etc. Basically think of something like that, and you are probably thinking about effects.

So now on to the effects in Vanquish.

At the beginning of the project, the director of Vanquish, professing his absolute hatred for crawling along slowly in games, declared, “We aren’t going to let the player get away with hanging out in cover as long as he likes. We are going to force them forwards.” He added, “The enemies are robots. When you kill them, they blow up. We are going to put as many of them on-screen as we possibly can, especially the grunts.” Those words made me feel like we were going to make a game, that graphically-speaking, would be far flashier than the normal human versus human shooters on the market.

We wanted to have maximum amplitude, so when the bullets are flying everywhere, you’d want to say, “Somebody save me!” Explosions would be booming around you, and shrapnel would be flying everywhere. Alright. Let’s just keep it simple and hit them over the head with volume. Let’s make that the calling card for Vanquish’s special effects. At the risk of causing a misunderstanding, we were going with quantity over quality because in the end quantity would be quality. Of course, if we just went simply with quantity the graphics of the game would suffer, and that would mean abject failure, so we had to aim for a baseline quality level and then open the valves.

I figured that it would make things a bit hard on us, but I’d make due. Once the direction we were going to take was decided, actually doing the work would be the easy part, because any time you’d find yourself against a wall, you could just chose the path of more volume.

However, if I just turned off my brain and increased the number of effects carelessly, the graphics and processing would both take a hit and it wouldn’t let us make the kind of action-heavy game that we were after. It would be up to the programmers and designers in charge to show their skill/combined efforts in figuring out how to either make really expressive effects that were ‘cheap’ to compute, or how to get the most out of the processing budget by making scenes as cool as possible.

As a result of all this scheming and planning, we were able to put really substantial effects into Vanquish. It appears that there is tons going on, both small and large, and in reality, there is a ton going on. Things are flying all over the place.

I’m probably the only one interested in this, but I think the shrapnel in Vanquish is really good. The huge slabs of concrete are nice, but I can’t get enough of the small, pulverized shrapnel flying all over the place or the dirty that is floating through the air.

Even when I am watching a movie, I will say, “That’s some nice debris.” Of course, those around me will say, “I have no idea why you are talking about debris.” But I’m living my job, so I see nothing wrong with it!

So there is a glimpse into how we created Vanquish. If you are interested, definitely give it a play, and get wrapped up into the craziness of everything happening around you. If you get used to Vanquish, other shooters are going to seem downright peaceful in comparison. And of course, when you see all of the little individual sparks, if you could think about our work as effects designers, even if only in your imagination, we would be incredibly happy.

Hi, everyone. I’m Vanquish art director and lead background designer Naoki Katakai. I haven’t worked on a Shinji Mikami directed game since a certain horror game you might have heard of, so this project definitely carried a feeling of nostalgia for me.

Designing Worlds

I’ve been designing backgrounds for games for over 10 years now. That may be a long time to be in the game, but it is still something that I love and it certainly hasn’t gotten old. In fact, I am proud to say that I have an awesome job. But as hardware has advanced, those of us making backgrounds for games have seen our job descriptions change. We’ve arrived at an era where people crave reality, cameras can be moved around freely, and enormous stages are the norm. Simply put, we are pushing towards replicating the real world in the game world. I believe that in the future, what we can accomplish in the real world will be taken for granted as doable in the game world. I also believe in the inverse; that which cannot seemingly be accomplished in the real world will be possible, and even seem real, in the game world. Background design will play a big part in this moving forward, as it is an incredibly important, and thus interesting, job. While I am interested in and find important both replicating the real, as well as creating new realities, I think that as a professional, it is really the latter that keeps me going. Vanquish was a project where I was blessed with creating one of these new realities.

The Space Colony

I’m curious as to what everyone sees in their heads when they hear the idea of a space colony. It seems as if this changes generationally. I’m in the latter half of my 30s, so for me, when I hear the words space colony, the only thing that pops into my head is Gundam. Like one of those things you’d see at Side 3 or Side 6 (Gundam space colony locations). But to be honest, I’m not that up on my Gundam, so I’m worried about screwing up if I try to write too much about things. However, if even I know about the colonies in Gundam, it should show you how much impact they had – human-made colonies in space, situated on the gravitationally stable Lagrangian points between the Earth and the Moon. Just writing that is cool. (A quick aside: I also designed the Vanquish logo. I modeled the Q in the logo around the idea of the Lagrangian points.)

Famed scientists have proposed many different types of colonies, and colonies have taken many shapes, but the day after we decided to base Vanquish on a space colony, I 3D-modeled and presented a cylindrical space colony much like the one that appears in Gundam. (I’m pretty fast when I’m having fun at work.) I think we were really quick to agree on this design because there are so many people on the team that are of “Gundam-age.” I also believe that the cylindrical design is the most exciting type of space colony design you can go for. The visual look of the interior space, and how it expands out, has a very SF-vibe, as the next town or city over could actually be above you. It is an impossible spectacle.

Yet when we got to the point when it came to actually make things, I realized that there really aren’t that many works featuring cylindrical space colonies. How would the people living inside see the world? There wasn’t really anything that I could reference, so my plan was to turn on the imagination and make sure to keep things “colony-like.”

Rolling the Dice

However, when we tried to actually make the colony, we ran across a number of problems. We couldn’t use many of the visual tricks that recent games have implemented. It would expose too much. It’s not a stretch to say that recent games look so good because of the liberal use of post processing on the backgrounds, and optical effects, to make the graphics look better. Games are using tricks to force the human eye into perceiving something as looking real. Furthermore, games going for realism make their distant backgrounds (sky boxes) by either using high resolution photographs of the sky, or by compositing a sky by projecting the “god rays” of sunlight that shoot between the clouds, then finishing it off with the details – shadows and bloom lighting that would be cast by the objects in the scene. Yet, the truth is that you don’t really need to draw that many objects in the sky, so you can reduce the draw load on the hardware and increase the quality of the graphics elsewhere, essentially killing two birds with one stone. This is one of the reasons why you see so many games on this generation of HD hardware that have stages with bright sky boxes.

However, the setting for Vanquish is the interior of a space colony. We weren’t able to use the standard methods for creating a sky! Of course, the colony has an “atmosphere,” so having a sky wouldn’t be outside the realm of possibility; however, we went to all the trouble to make it a colony, so clouding it up with thick atmospheric elements would be getting our priorities backwards. There had to be a better way.

My first idea was of rendering the entire colony in 3D. If I could devise some sort of trick, we would model the whole thing without putting too much strain on production costs. We would cram the whole colony, 6.25 miles (10km) in diameter, with models. Of course, you’d end up with a ridiculous amount of objects and polygons… Which means we would have to customize the engine to draw everything out.

Renovating the Engine

The Vanquish engine was created by making improvements to the existing Bayonetta engine, but to be honest, it ended up being entirely its own beast. We found new approaches for how we had previously handled areas such as lighting, shading, rendering, collision, and model construction. One reason was because we now needed to deal with a vast number of objects. We needed to handle, and process at high speed, large groups of objects used in the backgrounds, such as ones used for the colony itself.

Another reason for the engine rework was because we had to improve our development processes. While this is my first time making a shooter, I envisioned that creating the maps would rely heavily on a process of trial and error. How could we produce levels at low cost? In my experience up until now, the first level that you make never survives that way until the very end, and we work in a wonderful (?) environment where our teams have a crash-and-build style. We may even toss out and rebuild levels from scratch if they aren’t fun to play. It’s pretty legendary.

Due to this, we started by creating an environment that would support these kinds of requests. If we would have taken the currently accepted route for content creation on HD machines, we would not have been able to mass produce the high quality levels we needed for the game. That is why we changed our production environment; however, due to this change, we had to face harsh, new difficulties that this change created in regards to technical issues and art pipelines. We used a collaborative style where multiple artists could access and work on the same level at the same time. We also allowed game planners to design their levels directly. (Note: In traditional Japanese development practices, a game planner (designer) will usually create a level design document, which is then implemented by the level design artists.)

Personally, I love new challenges; however, I feel like I went into full production on this game full of doubts, still wondering if we could really overcome what was in front of us. Thankfully, we had a really talented staff, which made things easier on us. Good job, everyone.

A Dream Job, A Hopeless Idea

As a background design professional, the Vanquish project, especially creating the cylindrical colony, was an especially creative, original, and challenging job that I found very fun. I think there are a few games where a space colony plays host, but I think that the colony in Vanquish is the most “space colony-esque” game in the group. I also think that visually speaking, it is a world that you’ve never quite seen before. I think we accomplished what we set out to present to people, from the pitched battles in the foreground to the giant, expansive colony interior that spreads out behind.

Sometimes I think that it would be awesome if it all actually existed, but realistically, I don’t think there will ever be a way for someone to make a real space colony. It would just cost way too much money. If we had the money and time to make a space colony, it would probably be faster to just terraform someplace. At least, that’s what I felt after making a space colony in 3D. Kinda hopeless when you think about it.

Try the Game

Making a shooter required that I really play, and reference, a variety of TPS and FPS games. If we were going to put a new title into the pantheon of shooters, an especially full pantheon in the West, we couldn’t just put some half-baked product out there. I hope that you all give the game a try. I think you will find the experience of playing Vanquish to be unlike any shooter you have played prior. I really believe there is nothing else with the speedy, fierce battles you will find in Vanquish. You might find things a bit difficult at first, but give it a try. I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Check out the Vanquish GC Trailer in pristine HD.

Hello to everyone reading the blog. I’m Yoshifumi Hattori, and I was in charge of character modeling on Vanquish.

During the production of Bayonetta, I was primarily working on enemy models, but mid-production I was shifted to Mikami’s team. Since I was the only modeler on the team, I have a feeling that I ended up making the player character and enemies at the same time. By the way, Sam’s character was designed by Makoto Tsuchibayashi.

We focused on having lots of volume with the back pieces of Sam’s suit, as well as placing plenty of moving/transforming parts around the suit. These transformations kept changing on me, so we were often deciding on Sam’s design as we were modeling. At first, the entire suit would transform into different shapes, and there was even an idea that a female android “partner” would transform and combine with Sam (I was a fan of that one). As the player would hoist her up, their bodies would change shape in various ways from forming an enormous gun to having the android change into a boomerang and be thrown into the field.

We also had a dog character that survived all the way through the modeling phase. The robotic dog would do various things to support Sam during the game, including combining with Sam’s suit to become a powerful piece of armor.

As you can see, we went through plenty of trial an error, but considering game controls and playability, things sort of “quieted down” to the design you see now. But if you look at the small details of the suit, you can see the remnants of the previous full transformation versions.

The transformation that takes place when the helmet opens up was really well received. I wanted to see where else we could put in these elements, so we ended up with having the weapons transform as well. Johnny (Weapon Designer at PlatinumGames who designed the weapons on Bayonetta and Vanquish) already had some weapons designed, but he created new designs that fit the transforming weapon concept.

So we kept working and adjusting things until the very end, so I hope you give the ARS suit a spin for yourself. I think that you will have a great time!

Until next time!

Vanquish has four difficulty settings to choose from. One that is surprisingly fun is Casual Automatic mode. Before we started work on it, I can’t say that I had high hopes; however, once we got it up and running, I was pleasantly surprised to see that I was wrong. Once you get your target on the enemy, the rest is easy as pie. I’m sure saying it that way makes it sound totally uninteresting, but when you actually give it a shot, the tempo it gives the game play will make you jump up and say, “Woohoo!”

Yet, I still have to say my recommended difficulty is normal. It takes some time to get used to aiming and firing at enemies on your own, but we’ve fine-tuned the aiming controls, so you should be fine. I have a feeling you will be finding yourself in some very pitched battles.

Finally, we have GOD HARD mode. I think our fans will get where this one is going. This mode is only for the chosen few (you can’t select it on your first play through). If you are a bit of a masochist, I think you will have a good time. It is something for our fans to look forward to.

-Shinji Mikami

Vanquish was originally an open battlefield type of game, where the goal was to move around crushing enemy positions; however, once we got started with development, we quickly made the decision to change to a more linear structure. We abandoned the open battlefield and focused on making each stage as visually dense as possible. As a result, I think the graphics in Vanquish are really quite wonderful. It is one of the main points of Vanquish I want to recommend to people. (The only regret is that our decision decreased the amount of times the player uses boosting.)

Of course, arriving there was a struggle. Upping the visual density, increasing the contrast, making the special effects especially eye-catching, throwing tons of enemies on the screen… In an environment where we were doing whatever we pleased, it became pretty obvious that there was no good way of keeping your eye on the prize – the enemies you are targeting. I felt like I was being pin-pricked by the staff talking about how hard it was to see the enemies. Moreover, the enemy character that you see most often, a robot we call a Gorgie, was predominantly white. We had primarily gray backgrounds with white enemies. When you think about it from a realism standpoint, camouflage exists to make things difficult to see, so in that way things make sense, but from a game standpoint, it was not the best idea. I really liked the white enemies, so it took me a long time to come around to the idea of making them red. We also had to limit the number that we could put on screen at once due to hardware limitations. (This had the effect of limiting the huge amount of information we were throwing at the player, so I’m sort of on-board with this one.)

I’ve written quite a bit about it, but our art lead, Naoki Katakai and programmer Ryoichi tend to do whatever they please, and what they came up with was great, and I think our visuals are quite spectacular as a result. Thanks to all the staff that worked so hard on them.

This is the initial conceptual design for the enemy known as a Gorgie. At first, they had white bodies…

But they are red in the final design!

Once we made them red, they became much easier to identify in-game.

Hello everyone, time for my second blog.

I’m actually not even sure how many of these I have to write…

Anyways, I’ll give it my best shot.

In Vanquish, each territory will have all the voice played in the appropriate language in real-time, so when you are in battle with your enemies, you don’t need to worry about reading subtitles.

When I’m working through a Western game, even one I really enjoy, I don’t have that great a grasp on what is going on and has left me with some unpleasant experiences. (This mainly only happens with shooters though…)

I also wanted to share with you one of my favorite voices in the game. I’m really hooked on the English voice for our main character, Sam. He is voiced by an actor named Gideon Emery. He has an incredible smoldering quality to his voice that I find really cool. I hope you all get a chance to listen to his performance.

(www.gideonemery.com)

And don’t worry, we have Japanese voice in as well.

-Shinji Mikami