Bonus Content Disc/Environments: Ilos

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

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Derek Watts: So one of the planets we needed to concept up was the Prothean homeworld. This had been pretty well consumed by a jungle, it had been lost for thousands of years; and you would go to this planet to actually go through the archives, and figure out a pivotal point of the story: what happened to the Protheans. So, some of the stuff we looked at for reference for this was we actually looked at a few canyons in China in the province of Hunan. There were actually these large rock structures; we just ended up kind of modifying them to look like skyscrapers. I like the way the trees and all the vegetation grew on them. We didn't want it to be completely consumed by jungle because there would just be too much vegetation, so we wanted some of the city to actually poke through. So, some of the Prothean structures, we were just playing around with a few ideas. The ship was just thrown in there for just a bit of an excitement... focal point in this production painting.

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Derek Watts: This was a quick pencil drawing colored in with felt marker just maybe to explore what you would see on the ground. Is it very swampy? How much roots? Is there grass down there? How many leaves? What kind of trees? I mean, we looked at some reference from Angkor Wat, this temple in Cambodia. It's actually one of the largest religious monuments in the world. So we looked at the way a lot of the roots grew over the buildings, how maybe the stonework would fall down, and maybe just trying to decide what these Prothean structures look like in the background.

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Derek Watts: This is a map drawn up, just a 2D map. This was given to the level artist, he would build a block level. The numbers on the map represent where events would happen the designers laid out. Maybe 8 would be an encounter, or 9, where you have to run around a corner to go down the elevator... A little bit of an elevation off to the left about how we would want the player to walk around. Maybe he goes underneath. Maybe it's all covered with water, quite swampy below and when you get up on top, it's all this dry land.

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Derek Watts: This is a concept done up in SketchUp. I think it was... when you come down in the Prothean ruins, you take that elevator down and you talk to the Prothean hologram, that unit down there. This would be the room that we were going to build around it. Quite complicated. We were going to spend a lot of time on it. We ended up simplifying it up quite a bit, adding more roots and vegetation kind of coming in than we're showing in this concept.

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Derek Watts: This is actually an early version of the level built in Max. We actually just modified this a bit and showed it at E3. Very green. We were playing around with some blue mist, a lot of ferns, very "deep jungle" feel to it. You would probably think about having rain and a real misty feeling like you're in the deep Amazon. Just sweating heat... So this is the direction we were going at that time.

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Derek Watts: This is a concept done up of the actual Prothean pods. This is where the capsules that they were stored in; millions or thousands, however many there were in the ruins. They were all stored, and relied on just a few people to take care of them. At this point, these capsules were actually supposed to slide out. Maybe you saw the Protheans in there. You had to do something at this point. We ended up modifying that quite a bit to keep it simpler.

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Derek Watts: As you go into Ilos, you go down to the Prothean archives. We were kind of playing around with the idea of having a lot of unique elements in these areas. The road would really twist and turn, these bridges, and some curving elements... These big round doors that would carry you through and lock you out... As we talked to the designers more, they pretty well just wanted a really long stretch; not much combat in here at all. Actually, there would be none and you would just get blocked, talk to the Prothean. That's an emotional part of the story because he tells you really what happens. They didn't want any kind of combat to distract you from that. So, this is just a section of the road we were starting to look at: how are we going to build it, what do we want to build on the walls, and so on.

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Derek Watts: Again, this is another quick "SketchUp" of how the road might look. Pretty ambitious for what we ended up doing. A lot of unique elements in there, like these nice curved structures off to the right. Just exploring what would make this area unique.

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Derek Watts: This is another look at part of the level, as you kind of go down in the Prothean area. Some of these, we kind of kept. As you're driving through the Prothean areas, there's some very tall vertical areas in there. These are some early concepts for that. Part of the problem with this one is maybe the beams as you're driving along. As you start to work your way through this level, would you get your vehicle caught on those? Would it be annoying if you're driving, and hammer right into one of those?

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Derek Watts: This is just a quick drawing done up over a block level. This happens a lot when working with levels. The level artists have a lot of responsibility, they get a lot of freedom to design. Some of the levels will just do a few production paintings, some small drawings, and sometimes they'll ask for a few more. You don't really have enough time, so you'll actually just take a picture of the block level, paint over some structures in Photoshop. This is just a quick concept for the beginning of Ilos, when the rover actually drops, when you see Sovereign/Saren go through the gate. And you start that level, and you look back towards the enemies; these are some of the structures you would see.

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Derek Watts: This is just a top-down view and a "Max" of the actual level for the trench run. This thing we built really big; we ended up having to cut it back in size, but you can actually see up in the top left is where you start to come down, you work your way down, then to the bottom left, back up to the middle, and then off to the top right. That's the mass relay, where you get shot through into the Citadel. So, these were all components that we built that could be easily moved around. So, the designers felt that the original one was quite long, so we ended up shorting it up. It wasn't too much of a problem.

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Derek Watts: This is a prototype we did up for Ilos. This is almost like a set we built. We textured it, put in fog, placed a couple characters... Just to kind of get an idea of the lighting we wanted. We were really happy with this look. We thought it was going to be the final look for Ilos. As we started to build it, test it, a lot of issues kind of came up. Just with the plants, it was running slow because of the amount of vegetation in there; they punch through and so on. A lot of leaves that would intersect with the character; it was getting annoying, it was hard to see the enemies. So we had to start to think of some other ideas for this area.

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Derek Watts: This is just another prototype model, still with us thinking that we were going to do a real jungle feel to it. Just playing around with maybe the ground being a bit darker, maybe more rotting leaves. Really trying to decide what kind of fog we wanted in there.

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Derek Watts: This is the archives. You can see some of the structures that made it to the final game. Those vents that almost are pulled out, kind of a unique Prothean shape there... That curved wall off to the left with these large holes, it casts light down on the area. Originally, the designers wanted it all completely sealed off like you were in a cave. But we were going to have a hard time lighting it, because if nothing was powered up at that point, what would actually give it light so we could make you see? We didn't have any lights on the rover at this time. So, we ended up moving those holes up on the left, actually to more ceiling lights, casting light down through all the roots and so on.

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Derek Watts: This is just a view in Max of the trench. It's partly textured, just starting to get some of the terrain in rough. A lot of that you're not going to see because you'll actually be down in the trench, but some of the elements in that ended up in the final game. Pretty well the look of the trench made it to the final one. Those structures that went across cast nice shadows down on the water, just to break it up a bit.

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Derek Watts: This is just another early view in Max of the actual level, the trench run. Some early versions of the textures which we ended up modifying a bit to the new look. We added vegetation and so on. We were just playing around with the water, figuring out ways to make it quicker, look better and so on.

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Derek Watts: Another view of the trench. We wanted this water kind of cascading down almost like a canal, like a spillway. You would be stuck in one of those, driving along, a lot of enemies around here at this time. Maybe they would jump off the pillars. These are just things you think of as you build a level. What makes it the final game is usually pretty close, but some things need to change.

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Derek Watts: This is an area... I think this is the opening area. If you see the bottom left, that's where the rover drops in. You see those structures as we walk through. You can see all the vegetation at this point. There were going to be waterfalls off to the left. Down below, there was going to be this kind of swamp feel to it, reeds... You're trudging through knee-deep water. We ended up modifying that quite a bit. The basic layout of the level stayed the same. We just retextured it, removed a lot of vegetation for performance reasons, so you could actually see the enemies.

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Derek Watts: This is an early view of the archives. At this point, we had it quite open to the sky; you could see the leaves, the trees up there, the light cascading down... Nice mossy feel to it. We were actually quite happy with this. You would drive down through this. This is pretty well the final structure. Not much change in this to the final game. We just ended up retexturing and lighting it, but we were pretty happy with the look of this at that point.

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Derek Watts: Again, this is the opening. As you come out of the archives, you bounce around on this flat structure and then you drive down into the trench run for your final run towards the mass relay. Again, it still had all the vegetation in there, an old skybox...

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Derek Watts: This is our green trench run. Beautiful green, nice sky, a real kind of jungle feel to it. Swampy water, rocks in there. We thought this thing was pretty well final.

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Derek Watts: This is another view of that area. One thing that helped break up the trench run was we almost built these tunnels in through here with larger structures that kind of came over, kind of darkened up. This would be a combat area. Instead of this long trench all the time, you can kind of come-- We were actually going to make it so there was different doorways through here you had to try and open and figure out how to get your vehicle through there, but we ended up just simplifying it up quite a bit and keeping the trench run pretty simple.

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Derek Watts: This is pretty well the final area that we thought. This is the one that we had in E3. It has all the vegetation, it has the sky that we wanted, the look of the fog... We were probably just going to add some sound effects of rain. We thought we were done, this one was in the bag and could work on the next planet.

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Derek Watts: And then we changed it. And when we changed it, we changed it. So, one thing to solve the problem with the vegetation was to get rid of it. And we did; we pulled most of the trees, we just threw in branches, these small little plants that wouldn't get in your way. You could see the enemy a lot more and we went with more of an alien feel, a deep orange. We looked at the artist Beksiński, he's a Polish artist, he did these fascinating paintings with this almost coral rock structure moving over these figures and churches and so on; and we used that for a bit of influence on this. You can actually see some of the roots we actually left. We just kind of re-textured them, we put a new texture on the ground. It's almost like a coral kind of feel to it. This rock that would grow over all the Prothean structures.

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Derek Watts: This is actual level art. This is with the new textures put on there, some of the trees... You can see those turquoise lights, those were geth lights we put in there to help guide you through the area. Some people were getting lost, so we need some kind of a focal point to carry you through if you ever get lost; look for those blue lights... and just to introduce another color. We were also playing around with a bit of a blue flog at that time in the bottom left corner.

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Derek Watts: This is another view of that area. This is one of those geth lights. Nice blue lighting up; a deep orange in the background... kind of a real alien feel. Like this thing had been almost baking out of the sun, like this holocaust had happened there and so on. Just to really tie into the story of the Protheans.

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Derek Watts: This is what the archives used to look like until we made a quick color change. We did have it this deep blue. It was supposed to be deep underground at this point but we ended up pretty well leaving everything as is but just changing the lighting to that orange lighting that made it to the final game. The Prothean pods are those structures off to the left and right with the lights on them. Some are maybe open, like, as they start to get shut down or die, they would get shot out. Some of them were saved, other ones ended up dying.