Lost Planet: Oguro and Kawano talk Vital Suits

Lost Planet‘s a planet (obviously) full of bugs, and with the sort of wildlife we’ve been featuring in the screenshots and trailers, you know that pea-shooter rifle of yours just ain’t gonna cut it on the the hulking carapace of the next Akrid that decides to make a snack out of you. With that in mind, we’re thankful for the way game Art Director Takahiro Kawano and Director Kenji Oguro decided to handle the menace of these bugs with a bit of Japanese ingenuity – with giant robots, what else?

In an interview with Brian Dunn, Oguro and Kawano talked about the numerous stages their teams spent creating the game’s resident mecha – named Vital Suits – including how Kawano’s utilitarian approach to mecha design helped turn the game’s resident robots into something with a gritty real-world look – like Patlabors (or Power-loaders). As Oguro describes Kawano-san’s inclinations for mecha:

Although Vital Suits don’t 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 Kawano’s 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.

This is just a teaser of what these three talked about with regards to the game’s art. Feel free to click the source link to read the whole thing. For now, we treat you to these cool concept drawings.

More mecha pics after this jump!

Lost Planet‘s a planet (obviously) full of bugs, and with the sort of wildlife we’ve been featuring in the screenshots and trailers, you know that pea-shooter rifle of yours just ain’t gonna cut it on the the hulking carapace of the next Akrid that decides to make a snack out of you. With that in mind, we’re thankful for the way game Art Director Takahiro Kawano and Director Kenji Oguro decided to handle the menace of these bugs with a bit of Japanese ingenuity – with giant robots, what else?

In an interview with Brian Dunn, Oguro and Kawano talked about the numerous stages their teams spent creating the game’s resident mecha – named Vital Suits – including how Kawano’s utilitarian approach to mecha design helped turn the game’s resident robots into something with a gritty real-world look – like Patlabors (or Power-loaders). As Oguro describes Kawano-san’s inclinations for mecha:

Although Vital Suits don’t 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 Kawano’s 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.

This is just a teaser of what these three talked about with regards to the game’s art. Feel free to click the source link to read the whole thing. For now, we treat you to these cool concept drawings.