Derek Watts, the Visionary Behind Mass Effect

Published September 25, 2007

Bioware's recent Mass Effect™ event in Edmonton, Canada offered more than just a rare opportunity to play the game. We managed to get our hands on the game's Art Director Derek Watts to discuss, among other things, the game's look, feel, and the intrinsic hazards of jello worlds (it will make sense, trust me).

Industrial beauty.

The Level Challenge
Every department is put to the test by a certain feature or element of the game, and when I asked Derek which aspect of Mass Effect was most demanding for him, the answer came back swift and sure: the worlds.

The one thing that was probably the most fun, but almost the most scary, is just creating your own world. I mean, that's scary.

Derek noted, "The big concern was always keeping on top of levels because it's such a big part of the game … you spend three weeks on a character and it's pretty well rock solid, whereas levels always change. You're working with designers, programmers, you're optimizing it all the time."

Filter Time
Discerning viewers of the Mass Effect trailers have noticed a soft grain filter that plays over every scene in the game. I asked Derek about the filter's purpose and effectiveness. "There is a film grain on there, a real subtle kind of film grain," he replied, "It does soften up some of the issues we were having with the shadows, and it's what we wanted for a cinematic feel. We have a cinematic lens flare as well. We did play around with it, and at one point it looked like snow we had it so heavy, because we were just punching in numbers. We had people running in the room, going 'Oh my god, the film grain looks terrible!' and we're like, don't worry, we'll get it."

Call your dermatologist, please.

Their World
For Xbox® fans, Bioware is known best for Star Wars®: Knights of the Old Republic™, and while they could stretch their creativity within the Star Wars universe, in the end, the look and feel still had to fit a certain mold. With Mass Effect, the freedom to produce their own vision was theirs, though Derek noted the perils, "The one thing that was probably the most fun, but almost the most scary, is just creating your own world. I mean, that's scary. You just don't know what people are going to expect. The good thing about Star Wars is a lot of their stuff is already done, I mean, you have a great look for the Imperials, the Republic, you understand how the aliens look in Star Wars, how the droids are … so when we ran out of ideas on KOTOR, we could always go back to the concept books. Whereas us, if we couldn't nail something, we had to be a bit more creative. That was the most challenging part, designing everything from scratch, having really no reference."

It's All About Character
While the vast and gorgeous vistas, and the exquisitely designed planets are cause for a bit of jaw-dropping, Derek pointed out that perhaps the sweetest visual victory is on a smaller scale. "Really just look at the emotions that those characters are getting across and how realistic they look," he said, "The way the alien eyes look, the emotion around the mouth … that's a very alien looking head that's still getting a lot of emotions across. That's very subtle stuff we're trying to get across."

It's the little things that add so much depth and humanity and feeling to these virtual worlds.

Animated emotion is present in even the most alien mugs.

Ice Planet Cometh
With Mass Effect spanning literally dozens of planets, the opportunities for environmental variety are nearly endless. I asked Derek just what gamers could expect when they're off exploring the farthest reaches of Mass Effect.

"We have a large variety," Derek said. "I mean, whenever you do a science fiction game you have to do an ice planet. Everybody remembers Hoth in Star Wars, so as soon as you do a science fiction game, everyone goes 'Oh, ice planet, we have to do an ice planet.' We played around a lot with atmospheres. We have gas giants, meteors screaming through the air. They're very rich and well done. We gave our level artists a lot of freedom and they did a great job."

The question then becomes how much is too alien? How far can you go before the player can no longer suspend their disbelief? Derek explained, "With the photo-realistic theme that we were trying to achieve, we really had to look at a lot of reference photos of Earth, a lot of those sites are alien enough. Any more alien than that, and people aren't going to believe it. I mean, worlds made of jello or giant lollipop trees, and people are going to go 'Whoa.'"

That would be tasty though. I'd like to thank Derek for taking the time out to give us an inside look at the art direction and development process for Mass Effect. Look forward to the game's release on November 20th. Role-playing games will never be the same.

Article by Ryan Treit