Lost Planet

This is the third and final part of my interview with Art Director Takahiro Kawano and Director Kenji Oguro. Here you can read about what went into the designs of the Vital Suits and the Akrid.

If you missed the first 2 parts, you can jump to them here:
PART 1
PART 2

Click to read the full text for Part 3 of the interview.

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[Brian] How did you come up with the Vital Suits? What kind of design choices were made in the process of evolving the designs?　

[Kawano] When I would start working on a design, basically I just tried to avoid getting too complicated. I wanted the design to be simple enough to be able to sketch out and still get most of the picture.

A design that sticks with you is one that has all of the complicated, unnecessary stuff stripped away, with just a simple, cool design left. A forgettable design just doesnt feel right for some reason, or doesnt really leave an impression on you.

I didnt think there was any reason to over-complicate the designs. Its the same for great car designs, like Porsche and Ferrari. You can draw the basic shape even without looking at a picture, because the design is memorable.

[Oguro] Kawano is a pretty big tank nerd. He really loves his tanks. I think that side of him also helped push the game in a more military direction.

Although Vital Suits dont actually exist, they look like they could exist. You see some designs and they are just way too fantastical and out there to be realistic. But you look at the Vital Suit designs, and you think to yourself that maybe sometime in the near future someone could actually come up with something like that. And I think Kawanos love for tanks and design helped him keep the designs going in that sort of direction. Anyway, in a sense the VS are like tanks of the future.

[Brian] How are the Vital Suits different from traditional mechs?

[Kawano] Lost Planet isnt really in the same vain as your traditional Japanese robot mecha anime. So for the designs of the Vital Suits, we wanted to go with a more military, industrial look, something functional like a car or a forklift. So I took robots as bipedal walking machines, and started designing from there.

To Japanese people, saying robot often invokes images of a giant machine many stories high, that a person climbs into and pilots, like Gundam or something. But we wanted to make this game appealing to people outside of Japan, so rather than going for that giant robot style that appeals more to Japanese people, I tried to think about what would be more appealing to users abroad.

[Oguro] I wanted to keep the designs along the lines of vehicles and industrial equipment. I didnt want it to be too unrealistic, too far off into the future. As the Vital Suit name implies, at first we considered having them be suits that humans wear. But my personal preference was to have something that a person could climb into and pilot.

[Brian] Were the Vital Suits re-created from zero in the computer just based on the 2D designs? What was that process like?

[Kawano] Actually, when we were working on putting Vital Suits into the game, the producer came to me with a proposal. He suggested that if we were to make the Vital Suits into real models, action figures, and then put them into the game, the final product might end up being more realistic.

Nowadays in Hollywood its pretty standard practice to make a real-life model of something before turning it into CG. When you make it a real object, its all there in front of you. You can see it from every angle. So I wanted to do this with Lost Planet. Plus, I havent heard of a lot of other Japanese game companies doing it yet, either.

It was about mid-way through the development cycle that the producer suggested this to me, and at the time we had already finished creating the 3D models for 3 of the Vital Suits. So we didnt worry about those three, and only made figures out of the remaining Vital Suits. Still, the process worked very well.

The first one we produced was a figure of the PTX-40A Ivan, nicknamed Shiratama.

We commissioned a long-time robot model maker for the creation of the figure. We provided the design and a simple CG model of it, and after a few tries, we got the finished version.

[Oguro] When we were trying the first one, we and the place making it were a little apprehensive about how it would turn out. But once that first model was completed, it felt good holding it in our hands. We were pleasantly surprised by the results, and were ready to make more. The maker was also very pleased, and couldnt wait to make some more. So one by one, we had them create figures for the rest of the Vital Suit models.

[Kawano] They were extremely cooperative in working with us. They took the materials we provided and made the models extremely detailed. I think that really helped our modelers and artists bring out the details and make the in-game models seem more realistic.

When I was working on the designs for the Vital Suits, we had already decided to have a 2-legged model, a model with reverse leg joints, and a 4-legged model. But we added some variations on the designs for some more variety.

GTF-11 Drio

GTB-22 Faze

GAB-25M Cakti

[Kawano]Something that came up as a new idea was the snow bike. Standing up its kind of like an ostrich. And then when it transforms it turns into a snowmobile. The design team came up with this idea.


[Brian] Tell me about designing the Akrid creatures.

[Kawano] For example, looking at the Trilid image, one type of Akrid was supposed to be a flying Akrid. The designers worked on coming up with designs for it, but they were all too complicated.

Im sure you remember the classic game Xevious. Anyway, in that game all of the enemies are represented by symbols or icons. They are all designed very simply. The enemy design was extremely good. And I still remember that to this day. When thinking about flying Akrid, I thought if they were flying at me, itd be cool if they looked like an arrow flying through the air.So I drew an arrow symblol, added some wings, and thats how I came up with the Trilid design.

Since Lost Planet takes place on another planet, I thought about having different kinds of Akrid, like fish and reptiles, etc. But we wanted to keep all of the enemies consistent, so during the design process we settled on making all the enemies insect-based.

For example, I had this lizard-like Akrid that would stick to the wall and whose head would pop off if you shot it. But eventually all non-insect types of Akrid were cut.

The reason we went with insects is because of the freedom in the design and the kind of reactions we could give them when shot. For example, if you shoot something soft, all that can happen is liquid drops out. Theres not a lot of room for reactions. But if you have a creature with a hard shell, you can make it so that you can shoot its leg off, or break the shell with an explosion. If you can make chunks fly, you can have a lot more variety in the kinds of reactions the creatures exhibit, and all that goes to make the player more satisfied with each kill. So we needed that shell-like exterior, combined with something that would give enough freedom to the design. And thats how we settled on insects.

[Oguro] At first we had a lot of details planned out besides the actual designs. Like, what do the Akrid eat to survive on this planet? However, a lot of this isnt really prominent on the surface of the game.

[Kawano] One thing I wanted to show in the game was Akrid eating the dead bodies of other Akrid. I thought this would help show the eco-system of the planet. But this never made it into the game, even though I really wish it had.

[Brian] Lastly, do you have any words for the fans reading this?

[Kawano] I spent a lot of time working on the designs for all the Vital Suits. I hope you get a chance to try each and every one out. The Vital Suits are what I am most proud of, so I hope you have as much fun using them as I did creating them.