In a post discussing Vanquish’s narrative design on the game’s development blog, PlatinumGames’s J.P. Kellams reveals that the game ships with six languages on the disc: English, Japanese, French, Italian, German, and Spanish.
The blog post also discusses the narrative design of Vanquish. Kellams reveals that the initial candidate for the opposing force in Vanquish was China, but that Russia was eventually settled upon for reasons the development team felt were logical based on the real world. Kellams writes:
"I’ve noticed some people on the net claim that Russia is clichéd as an enemy force, but it really is the only logical conclusion. Vanquish is based on an extension of our current world into the future, so the original plan of a Chinese enemy makes very little sense. China owns most of the United States debt, and the US buys most of China’s manufactured goods.
When there is money to be made, people tend to find ways not to fight. Russia, on the other hand, makes perfect sense. Over half of all Russian exports to the US are petroleum products, so in a resource crunch, the economic ties that bind Russia to the US would be severed, allowing them to attack. After all, all wars are essentially about resource control."
Kellams also touches upon the subject of Vanquish walking a line between being serious and a parody of sorts, of a good vs. evil story rooted in war, like G.I. Joe. The intent with the English script, he says, was to never forget that Vanquish is a game, and that the dialogue was tweaked accordingly to be almost self-aware.
