You’re probably going to wonder now how you’d never noticed it before (that’s assuming you’ll actually admit you saw the film*), but it turns out that ghastly Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within movie has been a pretty big influence in the design of Mass Effect.
“Yeah, you know we actually reference a lot from Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. We used a lot of their GUIs and the way they did their ship – that was kind of like in some of the early designs for the Normandy,” Derek Watts, art director on Mass Effect 3, tells Xbox World Magazine (via CVG).
“Our attack helicopters are loosely based off that movie. There’s some great stuff, especially their glowing GUI screens; we used those a lot. I keep a folder of that stuff and I still actually tell the guys ‘just go back and look at that. Change it like that!'”
Despite its then-impressive CGI, the movie tanked with critics and the public alike, failing to recoup its almost $140 million budget and ultimately choking Square Pictures to death. The one guy was kinda hot, though.
* Although I’ll admit it, and I loathe everything to do with the brand on principle.
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