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.<\/p>\n
“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<\/a>).<\/p>\n “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!'”<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n