Nevermind all that business with the Reapers and the end of the world as we know it – Mass Effect 3’s art director has bigger problems to resolve just now, like designing game environments and trying to decide what to do with Tali’s mug. Nobody said this stuff was going to be easy.
“Art-wise the original Mass Effect’s levels worked really well but for gameplay they weren’t so good,” Derek Watts tells CVG.
“We had a lot of raised platforms and areas you could get caught up in – stuff we should have fixed right from the beginning.
“Getting used to the technology made it difficult for us, he explains. “We wanted those wide open areas, those swooping curves, the grand vistas and stuff, but it was hard to do with that engine.
“Videogames look a lot better if you clutter up hallways. It usually looks more realistic. It’s hard to do with clean, plastic, white hallways with the reflective floors you see in some of the movies.
“That’s hard for us to do. You rely heavily on the lighting and the materials and can you get those reflective surfaces? Can you do it real time or is it all faked? Do you have to flip the level upside down and make part of it transparent? You have to end up faking it and making it as good as you can.”
And the masked Quarian? No matter what she looks like, somebody’s going to be stroppy that she’s not up to their own personal standards of Quarian beauty.
“A lot of people want to have her face revealed and obviously people are going to be pissed off either way,” says Watts.
“Like ‘I thought she was going to look beautiful!’ or ‘I thought she was going to be the most hideous thing ever!’ So we’ve had a lot of debate over Tali’s face, but that’s the one we kind of dread a lot.
“We’re always ‘well, let’s talk about something else for a while!’ That’s something we’re going to have to decide.”
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