Bonus Content Disc/Technology: Mass Relays

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

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Derek Watts: Another thing we knew we needed was the gate to get to the different galaxies. [sic] We needed this, it was called a mass relay. How to transport the vehicle quickly across the galaxy. At this point, we were thinking it was behind Pluto. We were actually at one time thinking it was right in Pluto, right on the planet's surface. You would dig it up and somehow it would work that way. This is more of the structure orbiting Pluto. So, we started to concept some of these ideas up. This is one of the early concepts for the mass relay.

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Derek Watts: This is another concept. It was more like a deck of a carrier there where it would go through the center. I'm actually not sure how that would work.

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Derek Watts: This is some quick sketches of how the mechanical system would work for a mass relay. Maybe that cylinder would move up. There's a disc in-between those two blades at the right. Maybe that would rotate around and that's where the Normandy would go through.

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Derek Watts: Some more quick sketches. Just trying to figure out what would be the part that would make it interesting, like we need some kind of mechanical motion to launch the ship, something that people would remember, would be iconic... Something that we could really sell the game with.

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Derek Watts: So the guy that concepted up those earlier ones actually built a model in Max really quick, and then animated how it went through. So, it was more of this large pad. You would come up, those discs on either side would rotate around, and the Normandy would get shot through there.

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Derek Watts: This is another version of what you would actually see through the Normandy as you came up towards that gate.

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Derek Watts: So, one thing we do sometimes in concepts is we concept a lot of stuff, and then go back. If we're not using it for what it is intended, we might be able to use it for something else. This is actually a concept we had done up for the asari main ship, Destiny's Ascension [sic]. This was going to be that ship. After starting to look at this a bit more, we maybe thought this could be the beginning of the mass relay. We had a nice center in it, maybe that's where it rotated around; some kind of energy force. You'd shoot out, grab the ship, and launch it from there.

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Derek Watts: So, this is getting fairly close to the final concept. We put it more horizontal. We had these large blades that kind of came out, and the center part would rotate around. There's a movie, Contact, that was out quite a while ago that had these kind of rotating circles, creating this energy force. You drop the ball through there and that's how they shot their character through wormholes. So, we just decided to do two of them. They were oval, and instead of going through the centre of it, these things would just rotate around and create this energy force that would send out this bolt, grab the Normandy and shoot it down the length of those sections off to the right.

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Derek Watts: This is the final version of it with a quick concept of maybe what that effect would look like, and you can see the energy field off to the right. That would be what grabs the ship and launches it all the way down. The good thing about this too is the fact that it could show up anywhere near the mass relay. It doesn't have to come right out of the hole, even for tactical reasons. Some of the designers were thinking "well, wouldn't military vessels just hang around that hole all the time? Whatever came through, they'd be able to blast it right away." So, this would shoot you, and you'd come within the vicinity of these all the time.