Lost Planet

I’m blogging from my parents’ place in Seattle. We drove up for the holidays and almost had a White Christmas—it started snowing here on Wednesday night, missing the big day by 2 days.

This week’s interview is a little later than usual, with the holidays, coordinating with Japan and all that. But better late than never.

For this week’s interview, I asked Tonoe-san, the Cutscene Director for Lost Planet, all about the cutscenes in Lost Planet and the work that went into making them. Lost Planet Director Kenji Oguro also added some comments here and there.

Click to read Part 1 of the interview.

[More:]

[Brian] What is your name and what is your role on the Lost Planet development team?

[Yoshiyuki Tonoe] My name is Yoshiyuki Tonoe. I am in charge of the cutscenes in Lost Planet. That includes doing the initial storyboards and overseeing the whole process.

For other games I have worked on at Capcom, all of the work was done in-house. But for Lost Planet, I got the chance to work with an outside company for some of the work, and coordinating with them was also part of my job responsibility.

[Brian] What other games have you worked on besides Lost Planet?

[Tonoe] Previously I worked on Onimusha 1 through 3. I was in charge of the cutscenes for all three games. Basically I took the character models and environments and made scenes based on the script.

[Brian] What kinds of games do you like to play in your spare time?

[Tonoe] Actually I’m really into games from overseas (non-Japanese games). At first I was drawn to the visuals more than anything. I used to work at a company that does CG and stuff, so graphics and CG are something I’ve always been interested in. But around the time I started work on Onimusha 3, we started to see a lot more games from overseas being released here in Japan. So I started checking them out, partly as “research” for work. But I found they were a lot of fun and got hooked.

[Kenji Oguro] He’s more knowledgeable about non-Japanese games than anyone on the team.

[Tonoe] One game I found to be extremely fun was “The Lord of the Rings.” I was like, “Hey, I guess American games are pretty cool after all!”

[Oguro] Games from overseas have a really nice presentation, so it’s a good reference for us. I think the way things are portrayed or shown on the screen is really great. A lot of times they do the cutscenes in the actual game, rather than “movie” sequences separate from the gameplay experience.

Like, taking a war-based game as an example, you could be running down the street with your team when all of a sudden a missile hits a building, brings the building down and blocks the road. These sorts of unique ways of integrating the gameplay and the storytelling are really amazing.

[Tonoe] After the original Resident Evil, or Biohazard in Japan, I think the trend among Japanese developers became presenting the story part of the game through separate cutscenes, rather than in-game. But at the same time, developers outside of Japan have been integrating the storytelling into the actual in-game experience, and they have come really far in that regard. That was one of the things about non-Japanese games that really drew me in. It was just so fun seeing the story presented within the game, without taking the player out of the experience.

But of course I still love Japanese games too.

Besides playing games, I also love going to the movie theater when I have a bit of free time.

”Reference” material. The two games below Gears of War with Japanese titles are Battlefield 2 Modern Combat and Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter

[Brian] What other games do you think have really great cutscenes or CG?

[Tonoe] Going back to the Lord of the Rings game, it uses scenes from the movie as its cutscenes. But I thought those scenes were connected to the gameplay really well. It was handled and presented really well, I thought. When I was playing it, I thought it was above what Japanese developers were doing at the time.

When it comes to full-on CG movies, I thought the opening CG for Onimusha 3 was simply amazing. A lot of work went into it, and the first time I saw it I was like “that was awesome.” Of course it cost a lot to pull that off, too. I think it received a lot of praise outside of Japan as well.

But I think nowadays there are less and less full pre-rendered CG movies in games. In Japan still, Final Fantasy’s CG cutscenes are probably the most famous. They are simply stunning and a lot of time and effort goes into making them. And I think because of them and their popularity, pre-rendered CG movies are still pretty widespread in Japan.

The latest CG movies found in games are stunning and really help sell the game. But when I think about how they are used to tie the story to the gameplay, I wonder if they are effective at making the games any better.

[Brian] So, how many “cutscenes” are there in all in Lost Planet?

[Tonoe] In all there are 33, and if you played them back-to-back it would come to about 73 minutes in length. On average they are just under 3 minutes, with the longest lasting 6 minutes.

[Brian] Did you work on the cutscenes for Lost Planet all by yourself? Or were they done by a team of artists?

[Tonoe] This time around, I was like the supervisor overseeing the creation of all of the cutscenes, which was done by the team. So I didn’t really create any single cutscene myself. That being said, I did virtually all of the lighting and filter application for all of the scenes.

[Oguro] And that’s basically the final polish that brings the cutscenes to life, the lighting. It’s the most important part of the puzzle. The Onimusha games were one thing, but stepping up to next-gen hardware, the bar has been raised really high and a lot more is expected.

For example, if one light in a scene isn’t just right, or you take it out completely, the whole presentation and therefore the impact of the scene totally falls apart. Tonoe saw to it that every single shot looked exactly perfect, down to the last detail.

Jump to Part 2 to read the conclusion of the interview.

—Brian