There seems to be a trend towards retractable weapons, hiding the weaponry. Am I imagining that, or is that something that's actually more common now?
TL;DRRetractable weapons aren't a new studio-wide shift and won't be on every ship; a few recent combat ships got them as a deliberate visual choice made early, giving a distinct retracted and combat state.
Yeah, I guess a few of the more recent combat ships have had that sort of visual cue in them. I don't think it's something we're going to do for all ships. It's not like a shift in mentality or anything. It's just a couple of the new ships all felt like it was the right decision to make. I think with the Odin particularly, there was a lot of different references of different contemporary ships that people are familiar with. And one of the things we wanted to do early on was just have things retracted and tucked away.
It's a pretty bold move, because it's a lot more work to make all these retractable.
It's just such a cool moment. It is a moment in itself when they actually deploy and show the fangs, or teeth, as it were.
We don't have an Anvil ship anywhere near this size as the kicking-off point, so it's an opportunity for: what is Big Anvil? What is Anvil today?
I think as well, there's two very clear different visual states: when it's retracted and then when it means business. And obviously when it's retracted, you are limiting your defense capabilities, but that's where things like the automatic turrets come in. And then when it's time to party, that's when everything comes out. And with a ship of this size, we could wave it away with lots of 'it makes it more efficient, everything's tucked away, it makes it a little bit more efficient to fly,' but really it was a visual decision that we made early on with the vehicle, when we started having those very early conversations as to what we wanted the core visuals to be. That was one of them.