Jun Takeuchi on Lost Planet’s development

Jun Takeuchi, producer of Capcom‘s upcoming Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, says that the development team for the game sees Halo as a major influence during the three year creation of their soon to be released (January 12) game. In an interview over at XboxWay International, he says these words:

Halo was incredibly influential to us. As Japanese developers, what appealed to us was Halo’s great gameplay. It isn’t just a first person shooter, it also has strong action elements. Halo‘s influence really pushed us.

So much is the western influence on this Japanese game that they purposely avoided “cheapening” the creative process of the game design by just putting into it as many established Anime/Jap sci-fi norms. Here’s Takeuchi’s words:

…we felt it would be a real problem if we cheapened the Lost Planet experience by making it essentially an anime. So we began to think in reverse. We thought about how anime, such as Dragonball Z or Ghost in the Shell, had influenced Hollywood. When they make live action films, how are these elements represented? We realized that they try to make these things as real as possible, and that is when the art style of Lost Planet really gelled.

It’s still Japanese in spirit but they applied a “western-looking-glass” touch to the design making the game design a bit more unique.

Read the rest of the article after the Jump!

Jun Takeuchi, producer of Capcom‘s upcoming Lost Planet: Extreme Condition, says that the development team for the game sees Halo as a major influence during the three year creation of their soon to be released (January 12) game. In an interview over at XboxWay International, he says these words:

Halo was incredibly influential to us. As Japanese developers, what appealed to us was Halo’s great gameplay. It isn’t just a first person shooter, it also has strong action elements. Halo‘s influence really pushed us.

So much is the western influence on this Japanese game that they purposely avoided “cheapening” the creative process of the game design by just putting into it as many established Anime/Jap sci-fi norms. Here’s Takeuchi’s words:

…we felt it would be a real problem if we cheapened the Lost Planet experience by making it essentially an anime. So we began to think in reverse. We thought about how anime, such as Dragonball Z or Ghost in the Shell, had influenced Hollywood. When they make live action films, how are these elements represented? We realized that they try to make these things as real as possible, and that is when the art style of Lost Planet really gelled.

It’s still Japanese in spirit but they applied a “western-looking-glass” touch to the design making the game design a bit more unique.

They’re really trying to cater to an expanded audience with this game. Not only was the game design a bit more neutral, the development team also took the time to listen to consumer feedback from the demo they released. Takeuchi says that the text size will be larger on standard definition TVs when the game is released. They also cherished the feedback regarding the lobby system, and users can expect an update that will address that concern.

Speaking of multiplayer lobbies and games, here’s Takeuchi’s fave weapon and his take why it will affect multiplayer matches in Lost Planet so much:

My personal favorite among the different weapons is one designed for the VS, the Homing Laser. It consumes a type of energy in the game called Thermal Energy in order to fire out four lasers that slam into a locked on enemy. This gun is so powerful, that it will be a key piece of equipment in some multiplayer games. I can imagine some maps where players will make a run for the Homing Laser in order to get to it first.

As for the single player aspect of the game, here’s what Takeuchi had to say about the length of the game:

The length will likely depend on which difficulty setting the player chooses when starting the campaign, but it should take an average of around 10 hours to clear the single player campaign.

They plan many more updates for the game. Takeuchi says that the most immediate thing they want to do for now is to make multiplayer maps available for download for users.  The Capcom development team’s pet map as of the moment is the multiplayer map of downtown Osaka that they created. Capcom, by the way, is located in downtown Osaka.

As for sequels, they’ll wait to see how people react to the game first.