Beta64 - Splatoon

[Music] how do you measure success in gaming some games create enthralling storylines that can even impact the real world other games are so beautifully designed that you can't help but agree that video games can be art splatoon well they made me want to buy expensive plane tickets to japan to see two squid girls holographically sing live in concert to rock music and squid language but today i want to talk about the development of splatoon so i snuck into squid research laboratory stole this left code and now i'm all ready to see what came and went what was left in and what was splattered that doesn't make sense seriously though there were a lot of things that were scrapped in splatoon sure it was always meant to be a 4v4 shooter but it wasn't originally going to star squids it was going to start something very very different and on this episode of base64 we're going to look at just that and the rest of the development of splatoon splatoon began its brainstorming sessions in the latter half of 2013 with directors yusuke amano who previously directed new super mario bros 2 and tsubasa sakaguchi who in the past helped design various nintendo games like twilight princess nintendo land and we fit and then there was the producer of this new project who you may recognize from doing this splatoon 2 that's right hisashi nogami whose past achievements included helping translate banjo-kazooie for its release in japan and directing the me channel which you may remember from my previous video on the development of the wii menu definitely an interesting group of people from various different parts of nintendo but they all came together to do one thing create a new ip something that had never been seen in nintendo with fresh new gameplay never seen by the public and over the next six months they came up with over 70 different ideas on what to do but out of all of them there's one that they just kept going back to the idea of making a 4v4 shooter featuring the titular character tohu yeah so splatoon didn't really start out as squid's flinging ink everywhere instead its proof of concept demo featured gray and white tofu that shot gray and white i guess paint since that's what it says on the ui out of their noses i kid you not that is exactly what the developer said was going on despite it looking a lot like a prototype it had much of the same gameplay that splatoon offers you connect multiple wii u's to fighting team battles with the winner being whichever team covered the most of the stage with their own team's paint though in the earliest builds the map was actually on the tv with the player's view on the gamepad so opposite of what the final game has but these monochrome blocks of tofu weren't the stars for long they needed something a little more recognizable for their demo so instead of blocks of tofu they tried using the guys that you found on wet floor signs all right we need something more than this we need to go back to the drawing board we need something that's more than just placeholder characters we need something to really solidify that this is a new ip so they created this this my friends is generic human one of the team's first ideas for splatoon's main character but it's definitely not special it needed something more something to set it apart from all other generic humans and they finally did it they finally created something unique the cape they added a cape and if that's not enough for you they added this cute little hairstyle too so there you go the protagonist of splatoon of course this looks nothing like inklings in the final game but functionally they act the same what i mean by that is what can inklings do they shoot ink and they hide in it that's the main thing well these generic humans can do the same thing they've got the gun to shoot paint and they actually use their cape to hide on top of the paint since they're the same color see even early on the idea of hiding in ink or paint was going to be implemented they just needed some kind of logical way to do it the cape was one of their later ideas another idea they had was just having them turn into a bean yeah using a cape to cover the player and hide on painted floors that's a lot more logical but you the perceptive viewer would probably realize that that means players couldn't get up walls while in ink and that is true back then it wasn't possible in fact walls were one of the biggest issues the team had during development and here's what i mean by that after deciding to switch from tofu blocks to humans they chose to do something else too add depth to the stage in the tofu prototype there were no ramps or stairs or anything like that it was all just a flat maze so with humans added they decided to take this opportunity to add some verticality to the play area there was a problem though the algorithm they used to calculate how much of the stage is covered in paint was based on how much was covered on a top-down map so after adding depth to the stage they realized oh walls don't show up on the top down map so that means covering walls with paint is worthless and since it was worthless they decided to just make walls unpaintable but the team didn't really like that seemed weird to have so much of the stage unpaintable in a game based around painting everything so the team had a big discussion on whether or not to make walls paintable or not and while they were there some team members took the opportunity to say that they were starting to get a bit nervous about using generic humans as the game's main characters after all they looked generic and ironically the simple design actually made it more difficult to create characters so that way it would be easy to tell which direction they faced at all times at that time they actually considered honestly about going back to big nose tofu things again instead of using humans but let's be honest there's no way splatoon would sell featuring giant blocks of tofu shooting paint out of their nose on the other hand convincing the higher ups of that though that wouldn't be easy they needed something unique something fresh something not tofu and they needed it to be simple so what'd they do if you said it's squids you'd be wrong instead they decided to slap a couple big ears onto the human characters of bam now they're bunnies complete with t-shirts that they can hide in instead of capes to hide under and this bunny character lasted a long time lots of really high quality concept art was drawn up of these new and improved radical rabbits in addition to their pals we've got this bird dude that sold shirts instead of jalonzo a tanooki who would have had sheldon's job of supplying weapons probably a croc who honestly could have done anything really and this dog reminds me a lot of captain cuttlefish because they're both old i think oh look it's judd looks like he would have been around from the very beginning you know i always wondered why there was a cat in the fish centric world but now it actually makes sense it's because he was crated back before it was judd wasn't the only thing that they carried over from the bunny world though it looks like the tanooki and fox made it onto the buildings in the final version too heck they even had splatfest shown off in these concept art pieces like this one featuring soba noodles versus udon is that the only for majora's mask what are you doing here anyway these bunnies didn't stop at concept art though they even made it into the game as completely animated and playable characters and at this point it seemed like the bunnies were gonna be the final characters for the game i mean they fit pretty well the team liked that they were naturally territorial creatures in real life so having them participate in turf wars worked out pretty well but there was one little bit of a problem why would rabbits be shooting out ink why would they hide an ink it didn't really make a whole lot of sense and they weren't the only ones who thought that in november of 2013 they started showing off their prototype to different sales and promotional people within nintendo where they were asked the same question over and over again why are they rabbits in the game's context it doesn't really make any sense and they really needed someone to get this because at the time they didn't have anyone really backing the project so they basically had to shop it around just hoping it would be considered for a full release and with most of these people responding with the team was really starting to wonder if it was the bunnies that were the problem or maybe the game itself even when they finally got miyamoto to see it he agreed with everyone else bunnies weren't unique enough he noted that the characters could really be from any game and thought it would be best to feature characters that when you look at them the first thing you think of is splatoon so he suggested mario as a last resort of course if they couldn't think of anything else after that the team went back completely scrapped the bunnies and decided to give mario characters a shot which you can actually see in some early screenshots but they still didn't like it they didn't like any of their options it was time to once again go back to the drawing board they tried robots they tried scientists using syringe guns but in the end the only thing that made sense shooting ink were squids so with some squid designs in hand they went back to miyamoto and to their surprise he actually liked the idea even if everyone on the team was still reluctant of it but it's not like they had any better options so they went for it turns out those squids as the main character was an idea that they had long before their conversation with miyamoto but they never really went any further with the idea more than well that could be interesting so after talking with miyamoto again and him actually liking the idea they decided to take it seriously and brainstorm what interesting things they could actually do with squids and that's when a major idea was formed the idea of having the character have different forms specifically an ink creature form and a human form and this idea immediately clicked and solved a number of issues the biggest of which was what to do with walls their train of thought was if you could turn into a squid you could have the player swim through the ink and if you could have the players swim through the ink then what if they could climb walls and that was the point the team knew they had to do squids but there was one more problem that they had to face these new squids they weren't cute at least not in these early designs having a human squid hybrid well that was kind of funky to them and i'm honestly gonna say it's kind of creepy from this concept art the team started to wave for a bit they were wondering if this was really a good idea maybe they made a mistake maybe they should go back to bunnies or maybe tofu and then one day amano said in passing what if they didn't have to be human-like squids and squid like humans why not just make the squid form a squid and the human form a human and everyone was like booyah and thusly the inkling was born at first looking more like teenagers before they finally finally settled on the design making them not only a squid but now also a kid at this point the team had to go full force into the development of splatoon they only had a few months left until e3 2014 where they planned to show off the game for the first time and they made it they only had 10 of the game completed but they did make it and even had a playable show floor demo it only had one stage though urchin underpass and three weapons the splatter shot the splat bomb and an inkzooka so seeing as the game was so unfinished at the time you can bet there are a lot of changes so why don't we take a look at the e3 2014 demo of splatoon i guess the first thing we should talk about are the weapons the things i literally just mentioned turns out all the names for these weapons are different in this version of the game the splatter shot was originally called an ink shot the splat bombs were called splatter bombs and the inkzooka well that was just called super weapon okay real talk when i play splatoon if there's one thing i always forget to use it's my super weapon and like i shouldn't in the final game it tells me it's charged it plays a sound effect it shows the button i need to click and even the inklings hair technical things start shining but no i still forget and if i was playing this e3 build there would be no way i would have even known it existed seeing as there's no sound effect there's no shining hair there's no icon showing me what on earth pressing that button would do and if by some act of god i do press that button it doesn't even tell you how to fire it just says do it now that we've gotten a taste of what the ui differences are in this build why don't we check out some more like the come on and booya buttons which we've come to know and love over the years they were both originally just a single signal button also we've got a different refilling animation for the ink which was changed to look less staticky i guess and with all that fresh ink it's time we go splat someone or i'm sorry in this build you wouldn't have splatted someone you would have splattered splattered someone not only that when someone does get splattered a different ghost specter thing comes out of this unfortunate inkling on the other end of the splatter shop ink shot godly these name changes the person who shot them of course also gets some points which in this build actually shows up on the screen where the squid got splatterinoed now with that being said you'll notice that every time someone does get split splatted in this build the amount of points they get are different why is that now i want to get a bit into the meta of splatoon in the final game you never get any points for splatting someone instead the only points you get are from covering enemy ink or covering bearing or just splatting down ink but the thing is when you do splat someone they shoot out a ton of ink and that ink falls on the ground and gets you points so technically you don't get any points from splatting someone you get the points from the ink that falls on the ground afterwards and now back to your regularly scheduled programming from what i've seen in this early build of the game what i just talked about should also be the same notice how every splat is giving a different amount of points with some being like 19 and others two well if you look at the ground the 19 point splat had a ton of enemy ink that was covered while the 2.1 didn't cover all that much so technically this build of the game and the final game are the same neither of them give you points for splats the difference is that the e3 build calculates how much ink was covered from the splat on the fly and then immediately tells the player the way the final desert though is much easier to understand without studying the meta it really simplifies things just to say all the points you're shown at the end of the match are just from how much ground you covered with ink over the course of the game and speaking of the end of the match check out all these changes in the e3 build when time's up it says time's up but in the final game it simply says gate and then it shows off this very very simplistic blocky city with urgent underpass way up in the sky honestly it's kind of strange to have it so high up here since the actual stage is definitely not above all these buildings like the end screen shows it almost seems like the city background is just some generic background with the model of urchin underpass just pasted on top the final version of the end screen map definitely improved this because they actually used background elements around the stage that actually made sense anyway after this map is shown we get some different victory animations for the inklings as well as this bunny hop animation for losing and yes i do know that this animation is in the final game but i just wanted to mention it because it really looks like a bunny hop doesn't it almost like it was carried over from back when the main characters were bunnies okay let's check out our rankings this is important in the final game the scoreboard splits the players into their teams and then ranks them there based on how many battle points they earned in the match with some additional ones being given to all the winners but in the e3 build that's not how it works the players are color coded for their teams but they aren't split up that way instead all of them are placed in order of how many points they earned with a much smaller amount of points given to winners based on how much they crush their opponents so in this build of the game even if you were on the losing team there's a very high possibility that you could still be the best player in the match which is much more unlikely in the final version but i guess technically still possible wait thanks for playing we're not done yet we still haven't even looked at the stages or well more like stage to be honest there aren't really that many changes just some minor tweaks and removed objects throughout the place at the very beginning after this the horrifying early squid to kid transformation you'll notice that this tree was removed and there were also some grates added around here in the final version as well as a wall too and not to mention the wall to the right is much taller compared to the e3 build and now we can get to some stage layout changes like how this bridge was originally the only way to cross this gap but was later removed and given an actual connection to the other side in order to make that connection work they had to get rid of this fence as well as the giant water tower that was there oh and the area to the left that was raised up and the bumper removed which is a different color than all bumpers in the final version of the stage okay let's move to a different part of the map here the whole section on the left was moved up and given a ramp much like the ride already had and that bike rack was removed too that sure was a lot of changes huh but we're not done yet because that e3 demo of course was accompanied with a trailer and in it is a very different rendition a very interesting rendition of the song splat attack let's take a listen [Music] uh [Music] now as you probably expected that isn't all this different in this trailer no no no there's also a lot here that wasn't in the e3 demo so you know how the show floor only had one stage right urchin underpass this trailer had a lot more than that and we'll start this journey with walleye warehouse which even though it was only shown with a few brief clips it shows off a pretty big difference this stage originally had moving platforms which were completely removed from the final game not to mention this stack of crates in the middle is missing probably so that the moving platforms have plenty of space to move around so after they were scrapped these crates routed in to keep the place from feeling a bit empty next up arowana mall the first thing we need to talk about here are the spawn points which are located on ground level instead of being raised up with a ramp immediately heading downward really this place was much flatter originally lacking a lot of the verticality that the final version has you know what though this stage does look a lot more colorful though in this early version you can see a lot of that when doing a super jump notice how much color the buildings and surroundings have compared to the final game though to be fair the final did add some nice palm trees and stuff outside the stage soon you know there's that they also happen to cut this building completely in half and add more grates over the water so that way when i press zl i plummet to my depth and now the last stage that we saw back in 2014 an early salt spray rig which is almost completely different in this version the easiest way to see this is by comparing the maps from the e3 and the final games side by side with this you can see that they're similar in design at least enough to tell that they're the same stage but still they're so different the bottom center part was combined in the final game the spawn points were moved further apart and these small side areas were removed since they led nowhere anyway and tons of side alloys were added too just to make things more complex and difficult to reach the other team's spawn points honestly the e3 version feels a lot more separated with each team having their own half of the stage with only two connecting paths and a central area up top to meet at which by the way doesn't have quite as many props as the final version has alright that's all for e3 2014 the next time we got to see splatoon was roughly five months later in the november 5th 2014 nintendo direct and that also happens to be the place we got our first look at black belly skate park kept trigger fish and the game's single player mode hero mode or octo valley it also happens to be the mode that i played the most at launch because i took a week break and suddenly people started to be more competitive now since there were so many first time reveals in this trailer of course all of them are going to come with lots of changes but there are a couple smaller changes to weapons 2 that i'd like to look at like the dynamo roller or more specifically how the inkling is holding it it might not be obvious at first what the difference is but when you put it side by side with the final version see it's unfolded in the final game rollers only unfold during use and then fold back up when standing or walking around in this build though it looks like it would have been unfolded the whole time and that probably affected more than the dynamo roller it's likely that all rollers were unfolded at all times alright with that out of the way let's look at black belly skate park though really the biggest change here are just these stairs and these stairs and all of these stairs none of them made into the final game they were all replaced with either ramps or just drop-offs the early version also had these additional bumpers too but other than that the stage didn't change all that much definitely not as much as camp triggerfish which was shown off quite a bit in this nintendo direct as it turns out even though the general layout of the stage didn't really change all that much it's missing a lot of stuff here like walls a lot of walls went missing not only that it's also missing a few areas too like these small jet outs on the path and this whole area near the totem pole oh and speaking of poles the area to the left of the spawn points used to have these really tall poles that you could climb up for sniping purposes and while they technically are still here they're much shorter now and connected to a wall that blocks any sniping that could have been done originally this area around here is also interesting too not only is the graded path much longer in this early build but the rope bridge that was meant to help connect both sides is entirely missing meaning in this version it was much more difficult to reach the other team's side than in the final game and speaking of rope bridges this platform to the left of the spawn point was originally made out of rope before it became solid later on so those were all the new stages shown but really the main focus of the nintendo direct wasn't the new stages but instead the announcement of splatoon's single-player mode featuring none other than the octarian army they showed off pretty much everyone in this trailer the octotroopers octo divers octo balls octopods uh those scrap things and the octostom who is missing his green eyes and luscious purple lips but before we can dive into all this we gotta head over to captain cuttlefish in ingopolis whose entrance is in a different looking spot compared to the final version there is no vending machine no electrical stuff no bins though the poster on the bin does show up in the background of this early area not to mention the manhole cover that captain is hiding under yeah that's different too and it doesn't look like there's any grating on it either so there was no way you could have used your squid form to fall through it so maybe originally you would have had to open up the manhole and jump inside to enter octo valley but of course that's just speculation this isn't the only time that captain cuttlefish shows up in the direct though he also appears in a level i think it's kind of hard to see since it's so zoomed in and it barely lasts a second anyway from the looks of it though originally captain would have appeared in levels 2 not just in octo valley and the final boss battle either that or maybe was just simply a shot that they set up for the trailer that doesn't actually happen in the game like this freaking cool 2d platforming segment it looks amazing i want to play it but you can't it wasn't meant to be in the game to begin with it was just a cool little thing they added to spice up the trailer but not to worry there's still a lot more to look at now that we're in the valley a lot of small things but things nonetheless like how the sunken scrolls were originally not scrolls see the icon here it shows them as more of like sheets of paper than a scroll not to mention the spawn points and the checkpoints in these single player levels look different too and you originally had five lives instead of three oh and check out these early gushers which are missing their valves now last but certainly not least the octolings we only get a small glimpse of them here but there are definitely a few changes like some extra leg armor that's not in the final game shoes that appear to be a bit different with them looking like moto boots later made to be an equippable gear item and it also seems like they're missing their belts but i'm gonna be honest with you i didn't know they had one to begin with but i had to add that in for those hardcore octoling fans here i read your comments several more months passed after that nintendo drag before we got to see it again on the april 1 2015 nintendo direct but here's the thing you're probably asking how much really early footage could we find in the trailer that's only like a month before release and it turns out actually quite a bit because it reused footage from earlier nintendo directs and trailers and everything that wasn't reused well it was the same as the final game so we can effectively ignore this 200 okay yeah do it all right so now that we've reached that part of the show it's time to talk about unused findings in splatoon thanks to the data miners who posted them on the cutting room floor but here's the interesting thing there's not a whole lot unused in splatoon but there's a whole lot of unused findings for splatoon i'll get more to that later for now let's just see what interesting finds there are in the files of splatoon first off we got some unused models one of them being this unused seesaw that when placed in game functions like a seesaw these are meant to be in flounder heights but are set not to load and we know that because the internal name of flounder heights is in the name of this object can't get much more definitive than that there's also a handful of placeholder images too ones that were meant to be used for error handling except for this image of the squid sisters which was meant for the tvs that appear in the plaza and geez louise they're all tiny you can barely see them but that's how they are in the files so okay there also happens to be quite a few unused and early pieces of gear in the game's files some of which are just images for the gear selection screen others though are actually usable like this warrior headdress it's a one star piece of forge gear with the quick super jump as the main ability and it isn't used in the game at all despite being completely functional technically though it can be seen in the final game just not usable so to show that off i booted up my wii u after 30 years and brought a copy splatoon oh yeah i forgot about that team cali stay fresh okay so we need to head into cooler heads that's wait where is it actually got it it's been a hot minute no okay so right there that is the warrior headdress i'll show i'll show it in slow motion just to make sure we can all see it so yes the warrior headdress is still in the game but it's definitely not usable it's just a background prop unless you have the other piece of unused gear they weren't even this lucky they're all just icons but they are interesting so why don't we take a look at that right now layered anchor ls a black and gray outfit that was later made to be maroon real sweat gray edition later changed to be red round collar shirt gray much like the others and was changed to be purple varsity hoodie later replaced with varsity jackets since they look so similar white puffer tea looks super similar to the fugu t except of course white purple camo ls pretty much identical to its final counterpart except the armband was changed to orange stealth goggles which were later given green glowing eyepieces and the green helmet i was changed to gray custom travel boots same as the final just went from blue to pink and green shirt stravaganza now this one's really interesting besides its name it's super similar to the baby jelly shirt from the final game but this version specifically can be found here on the 18th sunken scroll from octo valley apparently you could have also purchased a pair of elite octoling goggles not the plebian ones in the game i'm talking the high class ones but there's no model there's no icon there's nothing and that's all of the unused gear and splatoon but there is one more place one more place that has 54 unused gear icons 14 unused weapon icons and 11 on you sub weapons i'm of course talking about super mario maker yes super mario maker has unused splatoon files in it so why don't we bust this open and try it so this this is all of the early unused gear icons for splatoon in super mario maker's files and as you can probably tell they're all rendered a lot brighter than the final game you can really see this with the shirt stravaganza gear that we saw earlier or what about the varsity hoodie in the headdress same gear but rendered at different angles and once again they're a lot brighter but do you want to see some renders with really weird lighting check out these unused weapon renders also in mario maker they're all lit from strange angles making them very strange and that's a freaking revolver that's a real gun with a what was that gu tube okay next up we got some sub weapons and super weapons too they all have very placeholdery icons that are in super mario maker for instance this is the squid beacon which was originally just a flag the suction bomb well it was actually a tennis ball originally the burst bomb now that looks pretty much the same just green and the splat bomb is pretty similar too the sprinkler here though is a lot less detailed version of the same thing and then there's this disruptor i don't even know what this is supposed to be and let's not forget the splash wall which is completely untextured and looks like it would have shot ink up instead of having to flow down and now let's look at the special weapons like the bubbler which is literally just a ball with a gradient and the ink strike that's a pink rocket with no control pad and who could possibly forget big laser you remember big laser no well that's what this icon is called and it's just a recolored version of an early inkzooka icon which looks a bit different from the final version if you compare that one to it the general consensus is that this big laser was originally an early version of the killer whale but then again if the big laser was meant to be held like an inkzooka as this icon suggests maybe it would have functioned more like the stingray in splatoon 2 than the killer whale perhaps but of course as i always say it's just speculation so we finally made it through all of the unused gear both in splatoon and in super mario maker but we're not quite done yet we still got one more thing that i'd like to talk about that was pretty darn popular for an unused object but now that octo expansion is here it doesn't really matter i'm of course talking about playable octolings these things were all the rage back when splatoon was at its height and it even soft locked people's saves if they entered your plaza true story never happened to me but so long story short splatoon's development team planned to add playable octolings to splatoon 1 and then backed out and how do i know this well first off it's in the game's files and actually works if you hack it in and not to mention there are just too many things that point to the team trying to add playable octolings even after release like how these unused octolings have unique eyes well not these there we go sometimes it actually uses the inkling eyes for whatever reason or does this it also has its own octo hair that changes color depending on what team you're on and it has its own unique version of the kraken and if that wasn't enough proof that they were meant to be playable which i assume it is but i'm gonna keep going the team even updated this unused model after release like adding an opposable mouth for losing animations still after all of that work octolings never became playable in splatoon 1. it wasn't until 3 years later in splatoon 2's dlc that they finally got to be what they were always playing to be a playable character well that should be everything about splatoon well of course there's one more thing that we definitely need to talk about the squid sisters after splatoon became a household name a book by the name of the art of splatoon was released which showed off a lot of early concept art of people like cuttlefish sheldon and not to mention four pages dedicated to the squid sisters we've got a lot of cheerleader outfits roller skates and even earlier stuff that looks pretty much nothing like the final game like these half squid mask things but even before all of this the squid sisters weren't meant to be idols they were originally going to be shrine maidens delivering messages from god to squid or kami-sama in japanese they obviously scrapped this and we don't have any art of it but we do know that it was replaced with a divine fax machine which by the way the squid sisters still technically deliver messages from kami which means both god and paper in japanese clever splatoon very clever hey everyone it's end card andrew here again first off i just want to say thank you to the huge amount of patreon supporters and hey i'm going to say something i've never said before want to subscribe around 60 of the people watch these videos aren't subscribed so if you want to consider clicking it bye

Channel: Beta64

Views: 1,059,821

Rating: 4.8889956 out of 5

Keywords: beta64 splatoon, splatoon beta, splatoon prototype, beta64, beta 64, bunnies, prototype, squid sisters, tofu, playable octolings, octolings, urchin underpass, saltspray rig, blackbelly skatepark, splattershot, ink shot, unused, early, gameplay, easter eggs, nogami, walleye warehouse, nintendo direct, nintendo, wii u, switch, splatoon 2, music, octo expansion, judd, octo valley, hero mode, single player, seesaw, e3 2014, mario, yoshi, concept art, inklings, captain cuttlefish, arowana mall

Id: tJ3s-xbEEwg

Length: 33min 0sec (1980 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 19 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/ClassicStress]

Is it me or do I now want a splatoon spin-off with bunnies instead of the inklings/octolings?

[u/waaaaapanm]

Who that sponge girl is ?