Bonus Content Disc/Technology: Geth Weapons

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

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Derek Watts: So, the geth were going to be our main enemy. They're Stormtroopers, they're evil guys, they're going to be everywhere... So, we had to do variations of them for different kinds of weapons. What did they have for ships? Did they have larger creatures for vehicle combat? We also wanted smaller objects that you could easily pick off with your small arms, maybe your pistol, some kind of a small floating enemy. So, the designers asked for a drone and this is a concept of a drone. It was originally supposed to come out of the back of the geth armature, there was actually a slot back there where these things would pop out. So, as the armature came walking along, it would launch about four or five of these out of the back of the creature. That was a pretty ambitious design feature at the time. We ended up just having these float around. So, it's got the large geth eye; the gun's kind of buried into that slot and just floats around and shoots at you.

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Derek Watts: This is a concept done up for the geth turret, the drone. This was the one that flies around, lands on the ground, then it lifts up the legs and flies around after you. The legs actually fold up behind it so it looks like it's more like a jet. This is a concept for that. Looks really good but then the modeler had the amount of time we gave him to do it, he just said he couldn't do it and needs to be simplified. So, we had to go back to the drawing board and modify it a bit.

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Derek Watts: And this is it after it was modified. So, we simplified it up substantially, gave it simpler legs... used a lot of stuff. Doesn't vary too much from the human one so we could re-use a lot of elements and able to build it in the amount of time we had.

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Derek Watts: The geth rifles, of course, were very important to the geth. What we actually did was we tried to draw up a bunch of variations, looking at different influences, and then what happened was we'd concept up the geth transport already, took that concept, and just cut it up in Photoshop and started to try and build guns out of it. So, if you look at the concept for the geth transport, you can actually see a lot of the elements in these guns. We did these pretty quickly. You could bang out maybe five or six in about two hours, and this is one of the variations.

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Derek Watts: This is another gun variation using that transport, just adding two barrels on the left. It didn't have that good of a feeling. It looked like it was more of a shovel or a scoop than we wanted.

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Derek Watts: This is starting to get a bit closer, it felt like it looked more like a rifle. It's starting to get the solid grip on it linked to the back of the gun.

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Derek Watts: This is getting really close to the final one. We kind of put this large structure on the top. It was supposed to move up and down as the gun fired. It's pretty ambitious and expensive since you can't really see the gun, we ended up not doing that.

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Derek Watts: This is another variation of the gun. Just adding some hoses, putting a few lights here and there, just trying to modify the design to get it a bit cleaner, looking the way we wanted.

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Derek Watts: And then, this is the final design. We ended up using the same material as the geth, that kind of grey-purple material. Simplified it up a bit, added a bit more detail in some areas, took it out of others. The weapon also had to fold up, so we had to cut it up so it would fold up on the player's back because you were able to carry this weapon at certain times. So, we just have a top-down front view, give it to the modeler. He built this one in pretty well a week, and it turned out really good.

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Derek Watts: So, this is the concept of the geth rifle folding up. We did a quick version of this for the modeler, it really helped him out a lot. It's hard to get these things to collapse. They have to collapse so small onto the back. I mean, a rifle is gigantic in the game. If you just left it the full size, it would probably go from the top of your head down to your lower knee. So, this is it cut up. The modeler built it, animated folding up, and this is just to help him out on that.

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Derek Watts: This is an early drawing for the geth armature. This is just a front and side view. That back section in the middle is to show the slot where the drones were supposed to pour out of. So, this just helps the modeler out with how the wiring goes, how thick the neck is. The unique feature on this was the kind of head and the eye. We actually used a bit of that to influence us for the geth design, the geth trooper. Another unique thing that worked out well was the hole in the neck and the plating around the legs. It had quite a large gun at this time; kind of front heavy, but I wanted this large Gatling gun almost on the front of him.

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Derek Watts: This is the colored version of the geth armature. At this time, we kind of wanted it more of an organic feeling on it. We didn't really have material for the geth really finalized at this point. This concept was to have it almost like machinery covered with his skin, almost like what you would see on a dolphin when he just comes out of the water, that kind of shine; that's what we kind of wanted at this point. So, when we actually did it, it was more of a flesh on there instead of a metal. We're starting to get to the look of the geth eye, the blue with the flare.

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Derek Watts: One of the things the designers asked for was a platform for the geth. So we built this. We actually outsourced this. They built it. We ended up having to chop off the front head on it, it kind of got in the way of combat as Saren stood on it at a few points. He was going to be shooting at it and he was always hitting that head. So, we ended up cutting that off and putting some effects underneath it to make it look like it hovers.

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Derek Watts: This is the concept for the "Hex", the geth shield. Originally, these things were supposed to be dropped on the ground and then the shield would be generated out of these. We actually built those but we found out that we didn't really need them, we just needed the shield. So, we just actually put the shields on their own. We didn't really stack as many that are on the far left. They ended up becoming quite expensive, so we just put larger ones that you could actually shoot out.

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Derek Watts: This is a concept for the larger geth rifle. It's like a rocket launcher. The one in the middle got a bit elaborate, probably a little bit too complex for the modeler to build. I mean, he could build it but just the amount of time that we gave him, it was just going to take too long. So, we had to modify this one a bit but it was going to be a big rifle about the length of the sniper rifle at the top.

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Derek Watts: So, this is a modified version of the geth rocket launcher. We just took the rifle, moved a few sections around, put a longer barrel, put more hoses on it, made it larger and it worked out well.

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Derek Watts: This is the geth tower. These are going to be placed a lot in uncharted worlds. They were going to be quite fine, I mean, you can place them around bases. You're trying to snipe the geth around there, blast them with your vehicle. It kind of had this claw kind of feeling to it, and just put the geth material on, and it turned out really well.

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Derek Watts: This is the geth turret. This is like a large enemy for the vehicle to fight. So, you place these around a level, you'd have to destroy it with a rover. It's very hard to destroy with rifles. At this time, it had these kind of claws on it; it was supposed to be placed on an uneven terrain and these claws would kind of mold to make it always level. We had to remove those though because they were causing problems during a collision in combat. So, we had to just pretty well use a straight cylinder. But you can see a lot of the influences of the geth where the rifle comes out. It looks like where the eye would be on the geth trooper.