Bonus Content Disc/Environments: Early Concepts

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

Image 1

Derek Watts: So in the early stage of the game, there's a lot of thinking to do about what you want the story to be, how you want gameplay to work--a lot of unknowns. So what we'll actually do as concept artists is just start painting up ideas. This is a city we had. This is actually part of a structure in the Citadel. This is below the Wards, this is a real deep down area in the station. This is actually going to hold the outer protective skin to the main part of the station. That's what those large beams are off to the left; maybe some control area or a magnetic field that helps support it, these almost maybe 10, 15-story trenches on either side. So you're supposed to walk around here. There'd be people living down here, like markets, real kind of back alley feeling to it, kind of built out of rough structures they would find, left-over steel. Some of the lower class people would dwell down here.

Image 2

Derek Watts: This is just a city concept; some ideas, trying to throw them out, get them down in Photoshop just so we can kind of keep track of them. This wasn't any specific planet at all. It was just what would a city look like in Mass Effect, and then get some ideas off some of the things that we did with it.

Image 3

Derek Watts: This is another city idea; probably on a planet, just maybe trying to get some of the structures, how the curved base of the buildings are. You see the middle part to the lower right: maybe a landing area for cars where people could get off, go into the rest of the level. These cars floating along would maybe go through a section in the middle, maybe some kind of tunnels. Just getting ideas down, maybe seeing what people like. This is a very early stage, and some of these we'll keep, some of them we'll just throw out.

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Derek Watts: This is a concept done up for the lower part of the Ward. So I was talking about a concept earlier for the place that holds the protective skin to the main part of the base. This was actually some concepts for some of these tunnels that went through. Maybe some air ducts, really support areas, a lot of hosing, piping; almost like subway tunnels, maybe some structure in the middle where people can get up and then go up to the higher part. Again, just getting some ideas down. That wall pattern was almost these concrete shapes that were bolted in, they do a lot of that with subways.

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Derek Watts: This is another city idea; just painting it up, throwing it in combat, see what people think. We ended up not using this one. Maybe we'll use it in the future, but just some narrow street in the city, offices or whatever, then going down the street below.

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Derek Watts: This is another concept, maybe this... I think we even thought about this for part of the Citadel, how would that city actually look. Maybe off to the left, it's a real kind of structure, they would prefab these things up and stack them on top of each other, maybe turn them around. This area off to the right was more of a nightclub. You could see the cars in there with the chauffeurs around. They would fly in, drop off the people, wait for them to finish with the nightclub.

Image 7

Derek Watts: Another attempt at a city, maybe a lost city. These people maybe just built giant skyscrapers on some kind of planet, painting them up... Just thinking of some ideas for if we can get something out of it, or use it.

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Derek Watts: This concept, we actually started to modify this a bit to become "war world". These are tall skyscrapers that are really thin, just like blades almost, about 400 or 500 stories high. You can see all the windows in there, maybe some of the ships, those are going to be two ships off to the top right, would connect to the top. A very misty, foggy world, which we ended up using a bit for "war world", it was going to be these tall skyscrapers on that one where you'd never see the ground.

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Derek Watts: Just another city; playing around with a large wall with these holes punched into it, where the windows would be. Maybe on the terrain, they've carved down deep into the ground where the city would be. Maybe some kind of hidden-- maybe there would be spaceports down there. Again, fast concepts done up and see what people think of them.

Image 10

Derek Watts: This is kind of a detail done up of that city I mentioned a couple ago, with the large, very thin buildings that were 400 or 500 stories high. This is more of a detail about where maybe some of the ships would come into a dock. Those two holes on the left where you see the one ship, they would pull in their dock, drop off the cargo. You can see some of the towers going up further to the right with a lot of other ships kind of floating around. Kind of this sunset feeling to this planet.

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Derek Watts: This last one here is just a hallway concept done up for the Citadel. This is, again, very early on. Just some benches in there. Maybe kind of getting some ideas of how the walls would look, how these plates would kind of form in there so that level artists could build them. You kind of see that one with the writing on there. Maybe it's kind of stuck out from the wall with lighting behind there. I just kind of figured out how maybe hoses kind of were always hanging down or some of the detail. Maybe the floor was always shiny; very polished look to it, metal or marble. Just exploring some of these ideas to see if we could use them later on.