Gravity Rush director shares his biggest influence

Keiichiro Toyama, director of Gravity Rush and creator of games like the original Silent Hill and Siren, recently admitted that he was greatly influenced by Crackdown when working on his latest game for the PlayStation Vita.

Crackdown was a third-person shooter for the Xbox 360—much different than what Toyama has offered with his survival horror games. So what's the connection?

“I really like the aspect of unlocking skills and becoming more powerful, and achieving a higher level of freedom as you become more powerful," the Gravity Rush director told the PlayStation blog. "Plus the open world setting. I enjoyed moving in that game.”

Toyama also cited popular female icon Lara Croft as an influence. "The main character was the most difficult thing to lock down, so we thought a lot about it," he explained in the interview. "If we made something completely Japanese, then it would be only acceptable to Japanese users, and we’ll lose audience in other territories. So we avoided that."

Interestingly, Toyama revealed that he only entered the business of creating horror games because that's what companies wanted. “I enjoyed it to some extent," he said. "But with advanced technologies, HD and stuff like that, making horror games with a limited audience isn’t really cost efficient. You need more money to make big games like that, and so it was becoming challenging.”

Check out our recent article on games that have influenced other developers.