Lost Planet Online—Q&A

Due attention has been paid to Lost Planet™'s extraordinary single-player game and the unique gameplay it brings to bear on the third-person-shooter genre, but Lost Planet also makes great use of Xbox Live® with its multiplayer campaign.

Take the Vital Suits online.

Director Kenji Oguro and producer Jun Takeuchi were both kind enough to address our questions and set the record straight on what Lost Planet offers online.

Xbox.com: What kinds of multiplayer game-types can we expect from Lost Planet?

One thing that we were able to add based
on feedback from the fans playing the demo
was the rematch functionality.

Kenji Oguro: First of all, there are Elimination and Team Elimination modes, which are similar to deathmatch modes. You can compete for the highest individual score, or the highest team score with 2-4 teams. Players get points for not only killing each other, but for destroying Vital Suit robots and for activating Data Posts.

Another mode we have created is Post Grab, which divides players into 2 teams and lets them compete for control of Data Posts. I think this is probably the most fun, because there is more to it than just killing other people. It's like a tug-of-war, and it can be super close, down to the very last seconds of the match.

The fourth gameplay mode is called Fugitive, where the host becomes a fugitive and challenges other people to try and hunt him down before time runs out. This is probably the most interesting mode, with the most potential for finding different ways to win as either the hunter or the hunted.

Chaos online equals the offline.

Xbox.com: Are there any current plans to support Xbox Live Marketplace, and if so, can you elaborate on the kinds of content we can expect to see?

Jun Takeuchi: Right now we are working on some extra downloadable maps, and more information will be released regarding those as it becomes available. Besides that, if fans let us know that there is other stuff they want to see, we definitely want to stay open to any reasonable suggestions.

Xbox.com: Are there plans to utilize clan support for multiplayer matches on Xbox Live?

Takeuchi : We haven't announced anything yet regarding clan support.

Xbox.com: If you could point to one area where the horsepower Xbox 360™ provides improved the game's overall design, what would it be?

Takeuchi: I'd have to say that the biggest change for us would be Xbox Live and how it allowed us to expand the world of the game from the single-player experience into the online realm where players can take on people from around the world. I am continually amazed at how robust and well-designed Xbox Live is. I can't say that anything is really "easy" to program for, but from all the services Xbox Live offers, to the extremely helpful people at Microsoft, making Lost Planet into an online game turned out to be much easier than I ever thought it would be.

Who knows what might hit Xbox Live Marketplace.

But regarding the Xbox 360 hardware itself, I find it to be extremely cutting-edge. Development of Lost Planet went extremely smoothly.

Xbox.com: Has feedback from the demos available on Xbox Live Marketplace affected the design or features of the final game?

Takeuchi: One thing that we were able to add based on feedback from the fans playing the demo was the rematch functionality. Players wanted to be able to play again against the same people, so we added in a feature that lets players jump back into the same host's lobby and play again. We were able to get this done in time for a download update before the US launch, so players will have this functionality from the very beginning.

Thanks to Mr. Oguro and Mr. Takeuchi for taking the time out to answer our questions, and don't forget to take a look at our Lost Planet single-player interview here.

Article by Ryan Treit