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Capcom explains the direction of E.X. Troopers, why it differs so much from Lost Planet
"They had kind of struggled with Lost Planet 2 a bit, because they were going in this direction of creating this multiplayer, almost festival atmosphere, including crazy amounts of content and ridiculous scenarios. Sort of Monster Hunter with guns— coming in and defeating huge creatures together—and getting away from some of the narrative strengths that were originally part of the franchise.
They were doing this almost kind of ‘party game,’ but their art style was leaning more towards the cool end of the spectrum. So, he [Ohguro] already felt at the tail-end of Lost Planet 2, that they weren’t able to marry those as well as they should have. That was one of the reasons why maybe Lost Planet 2 didn’t perform as well as it could have. Coming out of Lost Planet 2 as the franchise owner on the creative side, Ohguro-san felt really strongly about the need to branch these out into two separate products.
One of them being a lets bring all of friends together and let’s go crazy – almost a ‘party game shooter’ style of gameplay. And the other side of the coin would be to make a product that gets back to the franchise roots, which is more of a cinematic, narrative-driven experience that really touches upon the themes of colonization, survival, and that kind of stuff. He knew that if they tried to put those together into a single product, it would become even more of a disconnect. The more they went toward realistic visuals, the more that would contrast with the party game atmosphere.
The beginning of E.X. Troopers was, ‘Let’s take that party game atmosphere and make that its own product.’ And then, Lost Planet 3 is ‘Let’s take the core franchise values and make that into its own product.’
In terms of the anime style of E.X. Troopers, [Ohguro-san] wasn’t involved in making decisions on art direction, so he can’t really say whether they went too far in that direction or not. [Laughs.]" - Lost Planet executive producer Kenji Ohguro, through a translator
Link
They were doing this almost kind of ‘party game,’ but their art style was leaning more towards the cool end of the spectrum. So, he [Ohguro] already felt at the tail-end of Lost Planet 2, that they weren’t able to marry those as well as they should have. That was one of the reasons why maybe Lost Planet 2 didn’t perform as well as it could have. Coming out of Lost Planet 2 as the franchise owner on the creative side, Ohguro-san felt really strongly about the need to branch these out into two separate products.
One of them being a lets bring all of friends together and let’s go crazy – almost a ‘party game shooter’ style of gameplay. And the other side of the coin would be to make a product that gets back to the franchise roots, which is more of a cinematic, narrative-driven experience that really touches upon the themes of colonization, survival, and that kind of stuff. He knew that if they tried to put those together into a single product, it would become even more of a disconnect. The more they went toward realistic visuals, the more that would contrast with the party game atmosphere.
The beginning of E.X. Troopers was, ‘Let’s take that party game atmosphere and make that its own product.’ And then, Lost Planet 3 is ‘Let’s take the core franchise values and make that into its own product.’
In terms of the anime style of E.X. Troopers, [Ohguro-san] wasn’t involved in making decisions on art direction, so he can’t really say whether they went too far in that direction or not. [Laughs.]" - Lost Planet executive producer Kenji Ohguro, through a translator
Link