The world of Gravity Rush

Get a closer look at the fantastic world that awaits you in the gravity-bending PS Vita action adventure.

Continue your journey through the mind-blowing universe of Gravity Rush with our exclusive behind the scenes look with Sony Studio Japan. Discover how the imaginative world of this charming PlayStation Vita game was created...

World building

When we started planning Gravity Rush, we were worried about how to create a world that would complement our ideas of controlling gravity. We felt something would be missing if players were able to just fly around in a realistic city. However, once the idea of a vertical world - as opposed to a more flat, horizontal one - was suggested, it came together all at once. This multilayered world was built up like a maze and littered with hidden areas, making exploration enjoyable for the player.

Moebius and The Fifth Element

Design-wise we were influenced by both Jean Giraud, aka Moebius, and the movie The Fifth Element. Layered cities can be seen in some of Giraud's work and we wanted to build upon that concept in a movie style, similar to The Fifth Element. Putting these two ideas together wasn't difficult.

When we designed the city it started with us placing a giant pillar in its centre. Once that was done, we were able to imagine the rest of it and its surroundings. Also, setting the world in a fixed time allowed us to create really interesting things, like the district of Pleajeune that exists within the shadow of the pillar.

Culture clash

The background of Gravity Rush's city was influenced by our impressions of Copenhagen, Denmark, and the buildings were partially based on ones found in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. So in Gravity Rush there are things like modern billboards on top of old buildings, providing a mixture of various cultures over different generations - offering what we feel is a unique European backdrop. It's a unique city, born out of a variety of images. 

A city on the edge

We often get asked whether the city in Gravity Rush is futuristic, or what planet it's set on. Gravity Rush is a strange, fictitious world, far outside of reality, so much more abstract than usual. We also simplified a lot of elements found in real life such as politics, poverty and pollution.

This is not to say that the Gravity Rush world is without problems. It's a world being eaten away from below, posing a serious problem for the inhabitants of the city at its edge. The people who live above them don't see this as an immediate threat, so they have not done anything to help. Our heroine, Kat, starts off as just a bystander in all of this, although she eventually starts to intervene...   

Our inside look at Gravity Rush isn't over yet - so keep coming back to eu.playstation.com for the next instalment of our behind the scenes series. And if you've not yet read the first part, you can check it out right now in our The characters of Gravity Rush feature.