Bonus Content Disc/Creatures: Quarians

The following are transcriptions of the artists' comments for the design gallery "The Creatures of Mass Effect: Quarians" found on the bonus content disc of Mass Effect released in 2007.

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Matt Rhodes: In the early development of the quarians, machines, all of the story stuff, before a lot of it was in place, or at least before a lot of it was known to me, there was a lot of sketching done on, you know, what are these machines going to look like? What could these machine races be? This was the idea of something that was mostly human, but was slowly starting to decay. Something that was like a robot that was once a person, but it's trying to become more of a robot again. So, you know, putting almost like this naked cyborg, or this almost naked android in a human cloak that it's slowly rejecting by tearing it apart was really interesting to me. Removing its face as well, like it almost changed its face or covered it up or torn it off, was great.

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Matt Rhodes: Now here's the idea of a quarian that's-- Once we had more of the story ideas in place, it was like there were these aliens that wore spacesuits like skin, like a second skin, like they never took them off. They moved from derelict ship to derelict world, scavenging what they could, moving through the galaxy with no homeworld of their own, and trying to come up with a spacesuit that looked like it had been pieced together from found suits, from found objects, from their own materials, and that had also been worn like a skin. So, the idea of putting clothing over top of the spacesuit, putting robes over top of the spacesuit, putting decorations over top of it, that became a theme that I did a lot of playing with.

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Matt Rhodes: Here's another quarian scavenger. This guy's a little darker, a little scary. He's got the exposed... the look of exposed ribs. He's a little more thin. But again, trying to keep that suit close to the skin as much as possible, keeping the breathing apparatuses really close. I like the idea of too making the eyes bigger, just the idea of a scavenging race. The idea of being able to see their eyes, of seeing the emotions play in that, you kind of pity their position a little bit more.

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Matt Rhodes: Again, more scavenging quarians. Here's something kind of put back to the android, putting a coat on. When you've got a spacesuit, and you put a coat on, that says something about your view of that spacesuit, that it's that much closer to you. And the idea of wrapping your cables around it, and stuff poking holes through... These are themes that I'm glad we were able to explore.

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Matt Rhodes: Now here's the evolution of the quarian, from an interesting perspective. Each one of these images, each one of these sketches were drawn on top of the previous one. So just copy-paste and then paint right over it and try to respect it as little as possible while still remaining true to it. Now this was just trying to find new shapes, new themes, until eventually it became a search for the quarian shape. This was brought on by the story idea that the geth were created by the quarians. And so, trying to work backwards, and say that we had mostly an idea for the geth in place. We had agreed upon the sketch in the top left, to a point, but there was still this quarian question. So, by trying to find new geth designs, each, you know, the top row there is just trying to find "what else could the geth look like? What else could they be?" And then slowly it became a matter of like, "okay, well, if the quarian made them, then okay, we've got the legs with the bent-- We've got the way their feet are made, there's a hood aspect..." And so these things carried on until once you got down to the bottom right, you had a creature that you could believe made the geth, but that the geth were a corruption of the shape, that the geth were sort of the... they were the Hyde to Dr. Jekyll. Or is it the other way around? Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde? Either way. So that, you know, they're tied together. And when you saw them and when you learned the truth, it was more of a "aha, I knew it!" sort of moment rather than "oh, okay, I guess I'll buy it." And again, this is a technique that I've since used many times when trying to find a very difficult shape, trying to find a very difficult creature.

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Matt Rhodes: So here we have our final batch of options that people got really excited about. In the end, it was the closest to the one on the left there. Just, you know, when tying them in back to the quarian, I mean, to the geth, I like the idea of there being a hood in place here; that the hood of the quarian became this corrupted hood on the geth, and that their face became smaller and their identity became less as this hood slowly became their head. Also, the hood, because of who this quarian was, because we only knew there was going to be the one and that she was going to be, at least to some degree, fairly innocent, almost in some ways motherly. There was the idea of sort of the Virgin Mary, there's this almost innocent virginal creature that you feel the need to look after, playing up on some very old iconic images, but it works.

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Matt Rhodes: And here we have, once we agreed on it, we paint up the back, try to get everyone's agreement. Like, you know, some stuff just doesn't work, some stuff is too much. Having the pipes sticking out of the arms and legs was a very difficult thing, so we would either end up pushing them closer towards the body or get rid of them altogether, find another solution.

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Matt Rhodes: Finding a face for the quarian was also an interesting thing, because it was a matter of how much do you show, how much technology is there here... And also trying to think in advance of how it would tie into the geth. So here we have some double hoods, just some masks with technology around them. Again, I think the bottom left one is probably one of the eerier ones that is meant to tie into the geth mouth or hood face.

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Matt Rhodes: And here she is, here's the final model sheet, and down, right in the middle there you can see sort of a human girl face. I put that in just so that we could get the idea of how the inside of that mask might work, how it would relate to the face, but in terms of how much you actually see, well, I'm not sure, but yeah, I pulled the hood out a little bit farther, and yeah, put some color on her eyes. I really like her in purple as well, because it's one of those colors you don't really expect.