Vanquish Was Meant To Be Open-World

22 Jul 2010 at 11:11:18 by James Chalmers

Shinji Mikami, creator of upcoming shooter Vanquish, has revealed that the original plan for the shooter was to make the game open-world.

“Vanquish was originally an open battlefield type of game, where the goal was to move around crushing enemy positions” Mikami revealed in a recent blog post on Platinum’s website.

He went onto talk about how the team soon changed the plans to make the game much more linear so they could make each level “as visually dense as possible.”

Mikami revealed the change proved a struggle for the team as adding all of the extra visual items meant it was hard for the player to target enemies.

He explained, “Upping the visual density, increasing the contrast, making the special effects especially eye-catching, throwing tons of enemies on the screen… In an environment where we were doing whatever we pleased, it became pretty obvious that there was no good way of keeping your eye on the prize – the enemies you are targeting.”

The decision was made to make the Gorgie Robots, which were originally intended to be white, red so that they showed up much more easily on the maps.

Hardware limitations also meant that the development team at Platinum had to cut down the amount of enemies that were on screen at once. However Mikami promises he was “on-board” with the decision as it also meant the amount of info being thrown at the player at once time was limited.

Vanquish will launch on PS3 and Xbox 360 and hits shelves 22 October. 

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