Drawing Mass Effect 2: The World of The Collectors

GameInformer is offering up an interesting four-page article about the work that was required to build The Collector civilization in Mass Effect 2. BioWare art director Derek Watts helps fill in additional details alongside some new concept art:

(We were kind of imagining this brushed metal that had an alien feel to it. If you look closely you can see some of the Reaper arms attaching to the roof. We weren’t really sure, but we had kind of an idea what the collectors would look like. We were kind of basing them off insects and crabs. They were very organic and boney. But at this point, we wanted to treat their world like it was full of very man-made materials with metal and steel, and a lot cables and wiring. The problem with the geometry of the level is that it didn’t work for cover. We tried to get one of our environmental artists to build this in-game, and it was sort of our first realization that this might not work because all the walls came in at a 45° angle and the level got too massive.”

(We thought we were getting close, so we started to build the level. This level has a very brutal feel to it. It’s very stark with the harsh light coming and the clean void areas. But then we’d have these very organic creatures walking through the level. I think they were fighting too much against the clichés that aliens should have organic looking structures that look like them. We are trying to fight that but we had to go back and base this level off of what the Collector’s bodies actually look like. Clichés are there for a reason. You don’t want to do them all the time, but sometimes you can avoid them. People always say, (it should look like the alien, if the alien is brown and organic than the level should be brown and organic.) It’s like us humans going into houses that look like heads and arms and bodies. Our buildings and structures don’t look anything like us, but when we do aliens we usually have to match the design; it sort of avoids the problem. So we had to throw all these out.)