Hideaki Nakata, the system programmer in charge of developing the PlayStation 3 engine for Vanquish, posted to the PlatinumGames blog to give readers a little insight into how he approached the technology behind the game. Nakata-san writes:
For the engine powering Vanquish, I tried focusing on all-out quantity. Shinji Mikami, the director of Vanquish, made a number of requests. “I want the game to look unlike anything else out there! I want our battlefields to have the overwhelming feeling of a real battle.” I realized the only way we are going to pull this off is with “quantity.” More and more enemies are going to have to keep appearing, more and more bullets are going to have to fill the air, bigger and bigger explosions are going to have to ring out… We would need an engine that could pull that off while still keeping the characters and backgrounds rich in detail.
He goes on to explain that while Vanquish’s engine is based on work done on Bayonetta, the team also made several changes to the technology, including completely re-writing the renderer.
Adjustments were also made to ensure that players would find no noticeable differences between the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game. PlayStation 3 owners can rest easy this time around, since the PS3 is the lead platform for Vanquish. As for 360 owners…
“Even the developers on the Vanquish team have a hard time telling the two versions apart at a glance… So no matter which console you have, you have nothing to worry about!” Nakata-san concluded.
