Mass Effect 3’s Level Design Detailed

For the final day of their week-long coverage of Mass Effect 3, OXM treats us to a conversation they had with art director Derek Watts about the work they’ve put into the game’s level design, particularly as it applies to the Citadel, Mars, the Krogan homeworld, and London.

Beyond the Citadel, things get rough and ready fast. Mass Effect 2’s Krogan homeworld – a ball of smoking missile craters populated (at the time of visiting, anyway) by warring tribes – has provided useful pointers. “Environments, we got a lot of reference from Tuchanka. It’s rough. They don’t like cushions. Their world we decided to go with brutal architecture – very harsh shapes, nothing glamorous, bleak.”

At times, BioWare has reached out to real-life ruined nations for inspiration. “There’s one building which we modelled a bit too closely, which is actually a building in North Korea. They don’t play Mass Effect so they probably don’t care, but it’s a 100 storey building in North Korea and it’s completely abandoned.”

He comments later: “the reason we reference a lot of actual buildings is because we get a better idea of what the materials are. It’s a huge team that figures out all these questions – it’s too much to expect one level artist to work all of that out. With Mass Effect 3 we went with more angled beams and bringing some vegetation in on planets, trying to get a heavier atmosphere.”

Watts breezes us through the process of turning those inspirations into working levels. “We go in and do detail drawings – for levels we’ll do it quickly. There’s a lot of things to think about – where’s the combat, would it be better if they were further down, does it make sense, what do you need to do here, where does the narrative flow.

Oh, and then they also have this crazy Mass Effect TV feature. Two and a Half Illusive Men? Hey, it could happen.