David · Senior Weapons Artist

For pizza, you would definitely get one, yeah.

Cory Bamford · Lead Prop Artist

Yeah, we're all on board with that. If you send all of us each a pizza, we can make it happen.

Ben Curtis · Art Director, Ships and Weapons

It comes down to manufacturers, to answer it sensibly. It kind of loops back to the why no leather. Someone's going to prove me wrong that there is a manufacturer out there making military weapons with wooden stocks, I'm sure. But anyway, it comes down to: a lot of the manufacturers we've got at the moment are functionality-based manufacturers over form. When we get to the form-over-functionality manufacturers, the people that are making custom weapons or weapons that are not meant for a battlefield with however many hundreds of thousands of people using them, I think that's where you'll see a bit more experimentation in the materials used.

Cory Bamford · Lead Prop Artist

There's a market for high-end weapons in the universe. But obviously, a lot of the manufacturers, based on the fact they're quite, I don't want to say bog-standard weapons, but we're covering our bases in terms of the more generic weapon manufacturers, I suppose. They're more like your bread and butter. There's obviously more exotic weapons in the game. There's the explosive pistol whose name eludes me right now. Very ornate design. Lightning Bolt Company obviously furnish their weapons with some interesting stuff.

Jonny Jacevicius · Lead FPS Systems Designer

I was just going to say, it's interesting, because it comes out of that conversation between the writers, design and art, where Lightning Bolt Company, when we were assigning the manufacturers to this type of weapon, fit perfectly in terms of description. But when you looked at the company, it was actually almost like a Russian-based company that was brought into the future. I think even their original logo, their description, some of it was in Cyrillic even. So it's that very Russian aesthetic.

Ben Curtis · Art Director, Ships and Weapons

We had the UI solely in Cyrillic. No one understands it, but it'd be cool. It looks great. And it looks great because I'm not Russian and I can't read it. A Russian guy was probably like, yeah, it's normal.

Jonny Jacevicius · Lead FPS Systems Designer

A lot of the early reference that came out, I think even for the Atzkav, one of the reference weapons we had was the Dragunov. And while obviously the tech is completely different to that, it's not even a ballistic weapon, and the barrel's completely different because it's got that electron tech in there, we wanted some elements of that to come into the silhouette, and obviously some of the elements from that to come into the materials that are used as well. So I think even in part of that process, you mentioned the Kalashnikov, I think that was brought up at some point. And while I'm not saying we're going to make a Kalashnikov, that will probably come up as reference when we start looking at assault rifles for the company.

Ben Curtis · Art Director, Ships and Weapons

I remember years ago having a bit of a discussion with one of our designers about magazines and newspapers and how they shouldn't be a thing in the universe because there's no trees. And it's like, wait, there's no trees? And then that was discussed with narrative and stuff, like, oh, yeah, we're not doing magazines because there's no trees. There's planets filled with trees. What are you on about? Why are we not doing newspapers and magazine stuff? They're like, why would anyone ship one of those across the universe? Think how long it would take and how much it would cost to ship a magazine across. And you're like, yeah, all right, that's a valid argument. I accept that. But when it comes to bespoke weaponry or furniture or these sorts of assets, then it's probably something someone's going to keep and not just throw away instantly.

Cory Bamford · Lead Prop Artist

We're trying to convey an aesthetic at the end of the day. It's the same with the cardboard boxes, for instance. We have a lot of cardboard boxes in the game. That's just an asset that was made quite a while ago, and it's just proliferated since because it was a box. It's easy dressing, right? And then people are like, why would they use cardboard? It's the future, where the level of scarcity for resources and the refinement of resources is much more advanced. Why do people still have cardboard boxes? And it's like, well, should we have cardboard boxes? I don't know. I'm sure some people will tell you we should, some people will tell you we shouldn't.

Ben Curtis · Art Director, Ships and Weapons

If trees are a commodity that you have, then I'm sure there will still be people that will be making cardboard.

Cory Bamford · Lead Prop Artist

Yeah, it's a resource at the end of the day, right? Like plastics and stuff, you need to get it from somewhere. So I guess it depends on what resources you have available.