Mediaboss Marketing

Lost Planet 3 producer Andrew Szymanski believes that "not all games have to be everything for all people".

"It's tough, I think even when you're coming with a concept you have to make a clear decision what you want to do," Szymanski told OXM, "because storytelling by its very nature is not interactive. In the truest sense of the word, if you want a strong story, you're much better off reading a book or watching a movie. But games by their very nature being interactive, they don't need a story, it works without a story."

"So we're in this constant kind of push and pull tug of war between how cinematic we want games to be, how much we want to force that upon the player in terms of having them find it through gameplay."

Szymanski continued: "When we started Lost Planet 3 we said this is going to be a cinematic game. I know that's kind of a dirty word now in the games industry: "Oh, we're trying to do movies!" Well, yeah, we kind of are. And you can probably cut all the cutscenes together in Lost Planet 3 and make a pretty decent movie. But, we also have what I feel is good gameplay in between."

Though Szymanski then stated that "not all games have to be everything for all people," broadening franchises appears to be one of Capcom's priorities - two of its most recent offerings, Devil May Cry and now Lost Planet, have been outsourced to developers with a view to lifting them out of stagnation. Lost Planet 3 is a massive shift in focus for the series, which leans more heavily on story than its predecessor.

All that said, the publisher may have changed its tune in recent times - it issued dramatic profit warnings to investors last week, partly off the back of a "decline in quality of titles outsourced to overseas developers".

Lost Planet 3 is due to launch on August 30th. Read our latest preview, hot off the press and cold off E.D.N.III, right here.

Read more:
Capcom: devs can't "please everybody", "cinematic is a dirty word"