Bonus Content Disc/Environments: Virmire

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

Image 1

Derek Watts: So, this is an early concept for Virmire. At this point, we were thinking Virmire was this tropical paradise, more of a vacation planet. Looked at a lot of areas in Thailand, that James Bond movie, The Man with the Golden Gun; tall rock formations with these structures built into them, these floating platforms above this nice turquoise tropical water... There's a flying car over there on the left where people would come in and enjoy themselves, and so on. Then the designers told us that it was actually going to be an evil base. So, as you might well know, we had to go back to the drawing board on a lot of these.

Image 2

Derek Watts: This is actually the map for the vehicle level. You start off at the top right, work your way down through these shallow pools of water, going over these sandbars, getting to these gatehouses, forcing you to get out of the vehicle, have some combat, open up the next level... You're supposed to destroy some towers, and so on. There's going to be some areas where we looked out over the ocean, these kind of dams are built up with these breakwater areas.

Image 3

Derek Watts: This is a very early block level for Virmire. This is the base, this is the krogan breeding grounds. So, this is just a platform; built this very quickly. Designers run around, we look at it, decide, "yeah, this is what we want." "Is this the right length?" "Does the areas feel big enough?" [sic] "Is it too big?" and so on.

Image 4

Derek Watts: This is another quick block level. Starting to get a bit of a layout in here. We have these platforms; those kind of balls down the front represent the rocks. This is actually an old armor we had in the game that one of the characters is wearing; we ended up changing it quite a bit.

Image 5

Derek Watts: So, after we get the block level roughed in, we'll get one of the concept artists to kind of take that, paint over parts of it, and kind of really decide what we're going to do with this level. How are we going to make this thing unique? What are going to be some of the structures that we can carry throughout the area, make it iconic? So, we can build a few of them and not have to try and build every unique piece. It's just a nice, good drawing of how you walk along. You get the view over the ocean and some of the structures that we're trying to build.

Image 6

Derek Watts: This is another view of the base. These curved walls, a lot of openings... The problem with this is it's a bit of a nightmare to build. All these unique curved areas made it very complex. As you go back and looked out over the base, it made it very heavy for streaming load. So, these are things that we find out now that we can change as we're building the level.

Image 7

Derek Watts: This is a concept of some of the holding cells. This is where you find the salarians and you end up blasting a bunch of them if you choose to. So, this is a concept of how the doors would look. We wanted some glass in there and then we could actually use these for multiple areas in the cells. I think the cells appear in two places in a level. There's some really nice detail in these areas; you get a real feel for what the materials are, where the lighting is coming from (which is very important for these concepts) and this does it really well.

Image 8

Derek Watts: This is Saren's room where he communicates with Sovereign. You go up to the level, you go into here, you find the Prothean beacon and then you go up, and then you're supposed to talk to Sovereign here. This was all done quite early; we still had these computer panels around. We weren't really sure how Sovereign was going to appear at this point, but this was just kind of having a view out over the level with these kind of computer graphics, holograms over top of the windows.

Image 9

Derek Watts: This is a painting over the block level. This actually made it pretty far in the game. This is pretty close to what the final look is like. We have the breakwater, we have the walking up across the platform, we have the giant gun turret at the top... We ended up modifying this turret quite a bit. We just took the sniper rifle and scaled it up and put a few shields on it and it worked out quite well.

Image 10

Derek Watts: This is the krogan breeding grounds. This looks down into the actual capsules that the krogans [sic] are bred in. It has the platform, some of the mechanical arms... It's starting to get some of those sail structures that we incorporated throughout the level up on the top right. Storm clouds off in the distance... This is how we changed the level to make it a bit more menacing. Really nice lighting in this concept, really well done.

Image 11

Derek Watts: Again, this is another concept; trying to detail out some of those sails, the gun in the background, maybe even how some of the railings are. We had to modify these in the final game. They were bad for cover, and usually when you crouch, you always hit the one railing. Just some of the things you find out as you're playing through the game.

Image 12

Derek Watts: This is the concept for where you drop off the bomb. There's this water area, these structures on the left; we actually built those detail meshes. You can see those kind of curved areas with the lights on top. We had to square off the bottom a bit more because of the cover, but it was going to be this water area where it floods in. Water flows down into this cylinder, and then this structure here was supposed to draw you in. You leave the bomb there and you blow the hell out of the whole base.

Image 13

Derek Watts: So, this is the level artist's. He's taking the concepts and this is a really early start at building the level. He's taking the terrain, trying to pull it up to what we wanted, he's got a bit of the water in there... So, we're starting to get what we want. This is probably the first little while of building the level.

Image 14

Derek Watts: We decided that the terrain actually couldn't do what we wanted to, so we actually had to use a static mesh for a lot of the walls. We textured them up to look like the rock we wanted. We needed it quite vertical, cut them in at the bottom where it looks like the water is worn away at it. So, we're starting to get to some of the materials in there, the water, how the cliffs would look, maybe an early version of the sky...

Image 15

Derek Watts: This is a later view of that area. We're starting to get some palm trees in there, a bit more lush. We're also... off the right, we darkened it up quite a bit. On the vehicle level, we kind of wanted this barrier that it looked like it went into deeper water. So, as you drove in there, the vehicle would plunge down and you would die. So, it was kind of a natural barrier that would force you to kind of stay on the path to go around all these structures. There's a couple of models of the beetle in there that we used in this level earlier on. We ended up changing them to a different ambient creature.

Image 16

Derek Watts: So, this is starting to texture up the level. We've got some of the concrete materials on here, we're starting to get the railings. Where do we want to put certain materials? Where do we want to put the metal? Where do we want to put the concrete?... And just going through the level step by step.

Image 17

Derek Watts: This is the start of the krogan breeding grounds, you saw the concept earlier. That arm was just built up. We ended up not using that one. Some of the railings actually made it to the final game. There's the start of the sails to get a nice fabric, soften up all the concrete. This is an early concept for the krogan tubes. We just built a quick block model for those just so we get an idea of where they go and kind of look of it. We ended up doing a detail mesh of that later on.

Image 18

Derek Watts: So, this is a top-down view of the actual breeding grounds. There's the two turrets. One gets destroyed, we actually fight Saren, and then the trenches where the krogan breeding areas are. So, this is how big these areas are. This is one chunk and they split it up into streaming load areas.

Image 19

Derek Watts: This is another view of the krogan breeding grounds. You're up higher now, looking down again. Starting to get the sky in, texturing it up more... Just keep chipping away getting more and more detail in there, figuring out what's working and what isn't.

Image 20

Derek Watts: This is another view of that area. We're starting to get the water in down below and that structure that was concepted up with the hole, that's where the water pours down. You end up dropping a bomb. The Normandy also flies in that area. It's quite a big battle that takes place here.

Image 21

Derek Watts: This is some detail of the wall. We were finding out that it was just starting to get too much concrete. Even with the fabric and a lot of the other natural vegetation outside, it was just... We needed something else. So, we added this material with a cube map; just a bit of shine, helped out the area a lot.

Image 22

Derek Watts: So, detail meshes are pretty important to our game. We decide earlier on what we're going to make a detail mesh, we get the texture artist to build it, give it its own unique texture, spend quite a bit of time on them... Some of these can take up to 4 or 5 days to do. So, this is a detail mesh of kind of this linkage joint with the wires that come into this heavy concrete base we put throughout the level. Once you build these, you like to use them as much as possible in an area.

Image 23

Derek Watts: This is the detail mesh of the door. Nice big solid metal door. It looked really good. Nice material on there, definitely felt like it was metal.

Image 24

Derek Watts: So, as I was talking about earlier, the krogan breeding grounds, we built... We had a concept of the actual cylinders, the tubes, then we did a quick block model in the levels, then we had our artist do a detail mesh of the actual breeding ground cylinders. These turned out really good as well. We actually used them in different parts of the level, just kind of turned them on a side. These aren't quite complete yet, but they're getting quite close to it.

Image 25

Derek Watts: This is another detail mesh of that structure we have in the level. We had to square off the bottom corners for the final game, but you can see the nice material. Looks like it's kind of a concrete with a bit of paint on it, chipped away. The more time you spend on these, the better they get. This one was looking really good.

Image 26

Derek Watts: So, this is very... This is pretty well the end of Virmire. This is a view off one of the gatehouses. The textures are complete, this is pretty well the final look of the area. We have all the vegetation, we have our structures the way we want. We can see some of these detail meshes, those wire clips down at the lower right. Those other kind of structures that were built are also down at the lower right. So, we can use these throughout just to add a bit more detail to certain areas. We put those barriers off on the walls just for cover, so as we play through the game, we think we might need more cover here and there. We'll add some metal here, we can't always do it with placeables.

Image 27

Derek Watts: And this is the walkways. This is the final look for the area. We have waterfalls pouring down the background, very lush area, it looks amazing. Did a really good job on this area. We have those raised elevated platforms that were actually originally concepted up as the version where there was this tropical paradise. Now it becomes this turning point in the game. I mean, this is where you decide whether you want to keep Wrex or not, then you talk to Sovereign, you find out where Ilos is... It's just a pivotal point in the game; and it turned out really well, this whole area.