Lost Planet

Following up my interview with English Localizer Eric Bailey, here is my first of many exclusive developer interviews. I’m kicking things off with an interview with Kouji Wakasono, graphic designer in Capcom’s development studios in Osaka, Japan. I asked him some questions about the multiplayer level design. Kenji Oguro, Director and Lead Designer for Lost Planet, also sat in on the interview.

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Click to read the rest of Part 1 of the interview.

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[Brian] Wakasono-san, could you explain your role on the Lost Planet development team?

[Kouji Wakasono] My official title is graphic designer, but for Lost Planet Ive been doing the animations for the Vital Suits. I am also in charge of the level design of the multiplayer stages.

[Kenji Oguro] As he said, his role in the development of Lost Planet has been two-fold: Lead Animator for the Vital Suits, as well as Level Designer. He has provided a ton of ideas for the multiplayer mode. Hes also a whiz at graphics and rendering and all that, so he provided a lot of great ideas about how to pull off actually putting everything on-screen and making it run and show in real-time.

[Brian] Great. What other games, especially online, do you like to play besides Lost Planet?

[Wakasono] I really like Halo 2 and Battlefield 2. I especially spent a lot of time playing Halo 2. I really learned a lot from both of these games, and I was able to apply what I learned into my work on Lost Planet.

[Brian] How do you see Lost Planet as fitting into the landscape of online console shooters?

[Wakasono] We didnt make this game because we wanted to make a copy of other games out there. In our minds, it was more about making the game that we all wanted to make. Thats how we approached the development of Lost Planet, and especially the multiplayer experience.

Weve done our best to create a game that provides an arena for players to create their own memorable game experiences. Our biggest hope is that people will remember these dramatic moments and exciting online battles long after theyve finished playing.

The (online) gameplay isnt just about winning or losing matches. Its about how you got to that point, the series of tense and exciting moments that leads up to the final tally of kills and data posts grabs. There are a ton of ways to take on your opponents, a ton of experiences waiting to be had, and I think that it’s that kind of variety that really makes the game fun and distinguishes Lost Planet from other games out there.

[Brian] How did you go about designing the different multiplayer stages?

[Wakasono] Some of the stages are carried over from the single-player mode, and others were created completely from scratch.

When I go about creating and designing a stage, I start by thinking about what kind of stage I want to design, by deciding the theme for the stage. For example, I think to myself how can I make the first encounters with other people the most dramatic, or how do I design it so people on foot can stand a chance against the big Vital Suits, and what kind of weapons can I drop in what locations in the stage to make the action more intense. I think about all this, and then set out to bring all those ideas together into a comprehensive level design.

This initial step of coming up with the theme or goal for a stage usually goes pretty quickly. We also brainstorm as a team to come up with ideas together. A lot of times the conversation will go something like, What if you had it so youre running along on foot when a VS jumps out of nowhere and you have to run away somehow. So maybe theres a trench there and you can dive into it for cover. I think thatd be really cool. We just brainstorm ideas like that, coming up with vignettes of the kinds of dramatic moments during the battles we think it would be cool to experience.

After brainstorming and coming up with all of these ideas for memorable moments, I take those ideas and design stages where players would be able to experience these moments, or take a stage I’m working on and add sections to make a few new moments possible. I can go into a stage, make a hill or cliff or trench or whatever, adjust the terrain, and export it into a playable version to test out and see how the “moment” plays out.

[Oguro] I just want to add that designing stages for multiplayer, as you can imagine, is a much different process than for the single-player mode. It was a lot of fun designing the multiplayer stages around these kinds of moments that everyone wanted to see and experience online. Being able to play out these wish-list moments against other players is just a blast.

[Brian] Although the Pirate Fortress area is in the single player game, it also works perfect as a multiplayer map. Can you tell me about how you went about adapting the Pirate Fortress stage from the single player game? What was that process like?

[Wakasono] The Pirate Fortress area was designed from the start with the assumption that we would be using it in both the story mode and multiplayer mode.

One thing we added is a new indoor underground area in one of the buildings in Pirate Fortress. This was to add some variety to the layout, and at the same time give players some more breathing room for those 16-player matches.

Some of the multiplayer stages we created from scratch. But even for the stages carried over from the single-player game, we spent a lot of time editing and preparing them to really work well when played as multiplayer stages. On top of adding new areas, we re-arranged the stage elements, randomized destructible walls and weapon and VS placement, etc.

Basically anything that originally appears in the story mode will still get a large overhaul to make it suitable as a multiplayer stage. For some of the multiplayer stages carried over from the single-player mode, we even combined several single-player areas together to create new ones.

The stage design is of course much different in single-player story mode than in multiplayer, and the multiplayer stages will be played many more times than the single-player stages, so we wanted to make them complex and give players enough options and variety to keep them exciting.

[Brian] Do you want to add anything, like a message to the fans reading this?

[Wakasono] Lost Planet is the only game where on top of running around and shooting bad guys, you can use a grappling hook and hop into giant Vital Suits. But what I think is even cooler about the game is how the world inside the game feels like a real place. You feel like you are actually there in the freezing cold and battling other human players (and Akrid and snow pirates offline). I think the multiplayer experience in Lost Planet is unlike anything else players have experienced before.

I am extremely proud of how Lost Planet is shaping up, and I and the rest of the team have but a lot of blood, sweat and tears into the multiplayer portion of the game. So I hope you all give the game a chance by downloading the multiplayer demo and checking it out.

The final game will have 8 online stages, but we have plans for a bunch more downloadable stages for post-launch next summer. So play the heck out of the 8 (or 9 for CE owners) stages when the game launches, and watch for news about when well have our new maps ready to unleash on the public.

I better stop there before I get in trouble.
The rest is top secret, so youll just have to wait until next year.

[Brian] Well, thanks a lot for taking the time to do this!

[Wakasono] My pleasure. See you online!

Here’s a few pics of Wakasono-san at work.

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Click for picture labeled with names of staff

I’ll be posting exclusive interviews like this all the way up to the launch of the game in January. Be sure to check back next week for my interview with Kenji Oguro-san, Director and lead designer for the game.

—Brian