By our desire to create a language, do we end up pushing the very definition of these alien races, their cultures and societies, even further just by answering [the xenolinguist's] questions?

Yeah, definitely. And it's always going to be one of those interesting things, because we're working with the art team and the character team as far as what the physiology of these things look like and stuff like that. It helps push conversations forward on other fronts too, which is really cool. But at the same time, because we're having these conversations earlier than some of the other teams are looking at some of the aliens, we don't want to hem them in. So we try to, again, stay cryptic where we can, get answers where we can, but still keep it a little bit loose, so we have the ability to modulate and adjust as we go.

And I'll just hop in and say that the language docs, even if you don't quite have the time or the inkling to teach yourself Xi'an over the next month or year, they are a great resource just to read if you want to learn more about the culture of a specific species, whether it's their approach to time or gender or work, all these different things are all wrapped into there. So it can also be a fun thing just to peruse if you want to learn more about the Banu or the Xi'an in and of themselves. It's a very fascinating document. And I know anytime I work on anything related to one of these species, I bring up that doc and I'm just going through it to see how they approach it from a cultural aspect or how they think about things. So it's really cool. It's a wonderful resource and a really, really interesting read. So highly recommend it if you have any interest in any of the language or alien stuff whatsoever.