Why it's called Lost Planet 3 despite being a prequel

It must be hard to maximize your reach to gamers when there's a "3" in the title of your game. What if I've never played the first two games? How am I expected to understand all of the references and deep, established lore? It's quite the pickle for those looking to come into any established franchise without prior experience.

In the case of Lost Planet 3, it's a pretty interesting prospect. It's the third installment in a fairly polarizing series – either you love Lost Planet or you don't – from a relatively unknown developer who hasn't shipped that many games.
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So I asked Capcom producer Andrew Szymanski why that three is hanging there, especially since the events of Lost Planet 3 take place well before the first game in the series. It's because Szymanski didn't want to throw in a colon and subtitle.

"It's really hard, because as you know, it takes millions and millions of dollars to launch a new IP, and so you could be just as worse off trying to launch a new IP [than doing a sequel]. We knew the game we wanted to make and we knew it took place in the Lost Planet world – I'll be honest with you, I personally don't like this whole subtitle craze," Szymanski said. "Lost Planet: Origins or Lost Planet: The Untold Story – it's the third game in the series so we called it Lost Planet 3."

That's fine, but there's still that hurdle there if you've never played a Lost Planet game. "If you've played the games before, great – hopefully we've done our job and they like 3 and want to play 3. And if they've never played Lost Planet before, then the onus is on us to show that even if you never played Lost Planet before, this is a great place to jump in. That's on us to prove that." Capcom and Spark will attempt to do just that when Lost Planet 3 launches next year.