Bonus Content Disc/Creatures: Rachni

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

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Matt Rhodes: At the time that we were designing the rachni, they were described as sort of a mix of the aliens from Alien and the creatures from the book Ender's Game. So they're kind of a nod to some old science-fiction classics, things that have become very familiar to us. So we're basing them on insects, but trying to get a very distinctly alien silhouette. With rachni development, this was-- we were just trying to explore pretty much everything as far as shape goes. Something abstract, something familiar, but really strange in its silhouette. So, these were by Sean Smailes. This is some of his early development stuff.

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Matt Rhodes: These are some of the creatures that Sean Smailes was developing. He was going really, really far with just trying to come up with new silhouettes.

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Matt Rhodes: Again, more Sean Smailes. Just trying to come up with shapes, things that are very intimidating. Multiple legs, multiple limbs, things that come out of left field. Things that look very weapon-ish.

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Matt Rhodes: Again, just Sean Smailes trying to design just very intimidating, very alien-looking monsters.

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Matt Rhodes: Again, another Smailes. This one has the massive scythes and the quadruped sort of thing. It's just-- I mean, it's a mess of just spikes. So obviously, something to be scared of.

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Matt Rhodes: We got some help from another concept artist, Sung Kim. The stuff that Sung is able to do with silhouettes is just awesome. He's got a lot of experience in monster and creature design. So, when it comes to doing something new and fresh and different, he's definitely the man to talk to. And I think he was instrumental in opening this character up for us, he really gave us some new directions and things... and again, just a master of intimidating silhouettes.

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Matt Rhodes: Again, just more exploration by Sung Kim. Coming up with this awesome neck shape that ended up finding its way into another creature actually. The carnibug and the rachni both sort of branched off of this one image. The neck ended up arching over for the rachni and then eventually we added a face and some wings to this and we got two creatures out of it. So, yay for us.

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Matt Rhodes: Another variation on the theme. This is getting closer to a rachni. He's got the massive spikes on his back, and he's sort of getting close to a shape that's interesting and alien, insect-like, but definitely eerie.

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Matt Rhodes: Again, more Sung Kim. This one's got the massive pincher spike claws getting... almost lobster-ish. But, you know, this is all the stuff that we need to see it before we can decide not to go with it. But then, you know, in that way you also end up finding stuff that is very useful.

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Matt Rhodes: Now this sort of thing would be great. We're still waiting for technology to catch up to us. If someday we can have a creature that you can see its vital organs and everything like that, it would be fantastic and everyone was really excited when they first saw this. But we're still maybe about five years off. So who knows? Maybe someday. Maybe in Mass 3, we'll have some transparent rachni.

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Matt Rhodes: And here we are. This is the final concept for the rachni. This is what everyone agreed on, everyone approved. We'd gone through different material variations and figured out how it was going to fight. So it's got its tendrils. And this would be-- this was the solution painted over the transparent version of the rachni in a way. Something that once we realized we couldn't do transparent organs glowing, lit up veins, all of that sort of stuff. We just realized, "hey, you know what, the shape is still good." This is a pretty awesome creature. So it would be awesome to see swarms of this thing coming at you.

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Matt Rhodes: This is sort of the small, kind of baby spider version of the rachni. It's a creature that scuttles about, does all sorts of mean little things, bites you in the ankles, all that sort of stuff.

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Matt Rhodes: So our little drone running around... Once we had the actual design for the adult rachni, this guy was actually pretty simple. You know, just pull off a few of those things that you assume he would get in his mature stage. And we tried to get sort of this little bloody, eerie glow inside of him, like he looks like he's full of liquid with a black carapace. But yeah, hopefully that translates properly.

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Matt Rhodes: In Aliens, you have all these eggs all over the place, and they're really creepy and they're really eerie, but we wanted to try something different with shape. You can't just have big circles sitting around all over the place, because A, it's been done, and B, it's kind of... well, it's expected. So it was a chance to try to do something very intimidating, something that was a little unsettling when you saw it, and something that could potentially hurt you, like you're not supposed to actually pick these up. We went through a few things. There were these spear sort of eggs, like they almost shot out and stabbed into the ground, so they had the egg sac hanging from it. And then this variation was sort of the caltrop version, where it looks like something that would be just brutal to give birth to. It would just be awful, like, "oh, I can't believe that got pushed out." Or the spikes would form after it was laid. Just sort of a defensive thing. It's something that sort of helps protect it, because you can assume the rachni don't really care too much about their babies.

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Matt Rhodes: Rachni hive. This is where all the rachni start popping out. This is sort of their entrance level. Thankfully, I just watched a documentary about bees, and we had seen them building up these deposits. So we tried to make it look as much like an insect-constructed, geometrical, very simple cone. Something quick and easy, but with also a lot of stains on the outer lips. Just a lot of insect passage.

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Matt Rhodes: For the rachni queen, we had a few specifications. One of them was that we needed to base it off of the original rachni skeleton, so we couldn't go too far. We weren't making a whole new creature. So we were trying to build up onto the silhouette of the rachni itself. So here we were just trying to begin the process of saying, "okay, what can we add to the rachni to make it actually look a little bit more like a monarch insect?"

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Matt Rhodes: Another one of the specifications of this creature was that it was never actually going to be seen completely. It's going to be a silhouette, sort of in a murky tube, being studied and researched. So all you'll ever really see is a shadow and some glowing eyes. So in some ways, we had a lot of freedom with the design. So here, again, just playing with silhouettes, trying to base something off of the skeleton, but coming up with something a little more regal.

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Matt Rhodes: This is sort of the direction we ended up going with. Again, you know, even surface treatment like colors and all of that sort of stuff didn't really matter because she's going to be pretty obscured, pretty fuzzy. But we figured this is-- this would be a nice natural progression for a rachni if it were to develop its queen-like tendencies and become the leader of her people.