The Beanstalk

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The Beanstalk was a scrapped prototype level significant to early development for LittleBigPlanet. It existed as one of multiple fairytale themes early in development and received the most work among them. Much of its development took place during a three-month experimental period around 2006,^[1] during which Media Molecule laid the foundation for LittleBigPlanet's engine, gameplay, and features prior to the product being greenlit by Sony. It later functioned as a thematic predecessor for the Gardens, the first theme in LittleBigPlanet's story mode.

History

Development

The Beanstalk laid the foundations for the Gardens.

During LittleBigPlanet's early development, multiple concepts were created for fairytale themed areas in the game. Among these, an area paying homage to Jack and the Beanstalk laid the foundation for the Beanstalk. The Beanstalk would have presumably comprised a single level which involved the player(s) ascending a giant beanstalk to reach the top, where most early layouts pit them against a giant enemy. Where this level may have been placed in the game's story mode (assuming one existed at this point in development) is unknown.

Around this time, LittleBigPlanet had begun to gain its visual identity with a hand-crafted art style, and the Beanstalk inherited much of this change. Concept art depicts the beanstalk as being a giant, multi-leveled wooden structure covered in branches, with most of the branches' joints bolted on to each other. Running throughout the beanstalk's body and around its base are worn metal pipework and chimneys. Based heavily around the center of the beanstalk are a mass of mechanical tubes, cogs, springs, and undulating sacks, most of which are animated in demo videos.^[2] The major enemy towards the level's end took the form of a mechanical cyclops, fit with a fully rigged and animated model; how it would have functioned in gameplay is unknown.

In some of the preliminary builds for LittleBigPlanet, the Beanstalk had taken shape as a fully realized level, with much of its visuals being built from the previous demo reels. Utilizing LittleBigPlanet's physics engine, much of the level was based around climbing the beanstalk and interacting with various objects that could be displaced to the player's advantage as they climbed the stalk. Around this point in development, certain early gameplay features like the sponge resources appeared throughout the beanstalk, which could be collected by players. Around this time, LittleBigPlanet's structure had begun to change into how it would be in the retail product.

The Beanstalk, along with the rest of the fairytale concepts, was fated to be scrapped following its development between 2006 and 2007. Despite this, nearly all of the assets used within it were inherited by the next revisions of development, including the licensed track Get it Together by The Go! Team; the backing track that was used in the Beanstalk as well as other prototype levels for LittleBigPlanet. The fabric hills, trees, and clouds present in the Beanstalk would serve as the foundation for Germany, one of the themes following the country format for LittleBigPlanet's story mode. Germany would later become the Gardens, which took the assets from the previous two ideas and gave it a medieval-European look. While most of the assets originating from the Beanstalk survived to the end of LittleBigPlanet's development, some specific to the prototype did not.^[3]