Keiji Inafune Talks Lost Planet, Iraq

The Lost Planet producer tells Kikizo how war in Iraq influenced his new Xbox 360 shooter.

The significance of Lost Planet: Extreme Condition's origin is not something to gloss over. Look quickly and you'd swear Capcom's new game was made in one of the studios that pepper the West. Shooters don't do well in Japan, and they're just as rarely made there. Especially not for the console that most people think will end up last in the console race in Japan.

Executive producer Keiji Inafune began work on Lost Planet for the Xbox 360 about three or so years ago. Iraq was toying with the United Nations and America was preparing for invasion. That weighed heavily on the game, which spent its first year as a scenario and a script as Inafune butted heads with his bosses to get funding for the project.

Inafune explained to Kikizo in a recent video interview that he wanted to infuse Lost Planet with the idea of moral ambiguity - that not everyone can be painted as good or bad. He also wanted to give a nod in the direction of some of his favourite B-movies, such as John Carpenter's The Thing and Starship Troopers.

Lost Planet is set on a snowy planet humans are trying to colonize for a second time. A failed attempt 140 years earlier resulted in the first colonists being left behind to become space pirates. The planet is infested with Akrid, bug-like creatures pulsing with thermal energy - the game's health source.

The snowy plains that make up much of Lost Planet will be broken up by fresh terrain, such as the volcanoes where gathering thermal energy isn't as much of a concern. Capcom is also planning greater variety in the maps offered players for online multiplayer.

Many Xbox 360 owners are probably already familiar with those modes. Capcom was quick to pounce on the Xbox Live Marketplace as a tool for bypassing cover-mounted discs and the like to deliver demos straight to the audience.

"Marketplace is a great asset for us," Inafune told Kikizo. "We released the demo and we had loads of feedback, which we incorporated in the game. We were not really certain how Western players who are shooter game fans would react to our first attempt [at a shooter game]. But all went well. We can test the water before releasing a game."

The Xbox 360 has sold more than 10 million units worldwide, but the vast majority of those sales were made in the West. It's for this reason that Lost Planet was never intended as a Japanese game but rather one meant for a wider audience.

Because of this skewed popularity of the console, rumours have spread that the game would jump to the PlayStation 3, which overtook the Xbox 360 in Japan in mere weeks after its November debut.

"We know that there is a rumour that this is a timed exclusive. That is not correct," Inafune said. "This is exclusive to 360."

Lost Planet: Extreme Condition will be out for Xbox 360 on 12 January. Check out our full video interview with Keiji Inafune for more.

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo