It was one of those "wish we were there" moments: the Lost Planet launch shindig in San Francisco. Capcom's pictures from the event kinda only exacerbates the feeling, although it also gives us a good look of what happened at the party. No fetch celebs were spotted at this launch party (from what we could tell from the photos anyway), but lots of pics of lots of people having a blast, losing themselves in E.D.N. III. Lost Planet community blogger Brian Dunn was also kind enough to give a thorough account of the party.

Read all about it after the Jump!

Yeah, we guess we made the point that Lost Planet: Extreme Condition gives off the feel of a big-budget sci-fi movie. Part of that really goes to cutscene director Capcom sicced onto the game, Yoshiyuki Tonoe. And as he tells Brian Dunn, there is one reference material he found useful in honing his craft as a cutscene director. Western games. Or, as explained by game director Kenji Oguro, who also was in the interview:

Games from overseas have a really nice presentation, so it’s a good reference for us. I think the way things are portrayed or shown on the screen is really great. A lot of times they do the cutscenes in the actual game, rather than "movie" sequences separate from the gameplay experience.

So if the cutscenes feel much like they came out of a dev lab in North America, that's probably because of Tonoe, who also happens to probably be the biggest Western game addict in the Lost Planet team. Oguro says he's "the most knowledgeable" of them when it comes to Western games. And Tonoe continues: "One game I found to be extremely fun was The Lord of the Rings. I was like, 'Hey, I guess American games are pretty cool after all!'"

You wanna know what else the guy's been playing? Here's Dunn's picture of Tonoe's bin of boxes showing a mix of PS2, PS3, and 360 games, both east and west. Yep, that's Gears of War right there.

Lost Planet's a planet (obviously) full of bugs, and with the sort of wildlife we've been featuring in the screenshots and trailers, you know that pea-shooter rifle of yours just ain't gonna cut it on the the hulking carapace of the next Akrid that decides to make a snack out of you. With that in mind, we're thankful for the way game Art Director Takahiro Kawano and Director Kenji Oguro decided to handle the menace of these bugs with a bit of Japanese ingenuity - with giant robots, what else?

In an interview with Brian Dunn, Oguro and Kawano talked about the numerous stages their teams spent creating the game's resident mecha - named Vital Suits - including how Kawano's utilitarian approach to mecha design helped turn the game's resident robots into something with a gritty real-world look - like Patlabors (or Power-loaders). As Oguro describes Kawano-san's inclinations for mecha:

Although Vital Suits don't actually exist, they look like they could exist. You see some designs and they are just way too fantastical and out there to be realistic. But you look at the Vital Suit designs, and you think to yourself that maybe sometime in the near future someone could actually come up with something like that. And I think Kawano's love for tanks and design helped him keep the designs going in that sort of direction. Anyway, in a sense the VS are like "tanks" of the future.

This is just a teaser of what these three talked about with regards to the game's art. Feel free to click the source link to read the whole thing. For now, we treat you to these cool concept drawings.

More mecha pics after this jump!