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.
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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!
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!
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!
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
