When you get to the 3D art phase, do you ever take something that was geometry in the concept and make it POM in the final model?

Yeah, for sure. So for those of you that aren't aware what POM is, it's basically like a decal, so a floating sticker that gives the game engine information which essentially fakes depth or height into that sticker. So you see there that looks like it goes in, but it's actually not. That's essentially what it is. And you can save so much memory.

There are ships where, as you're walking through, you look down, there's a grate, and you can see a bunch of wires beneath the grate. The wires are not there. Neither is the grate, for that matter. It's just a fancy shifting texture there. It's a very, very powerful tool. But it's one of the ways we can add a lot of detail but maintain decent performance.