When designing the look and layout of a ship, how do you weigh functionality and sensibility versus the obvious rule of cool?
TL;DRFunctionality comes first but ships still have to look cool; the team says it is now more considered rather than deliberately rule-of-cool, with realism and Chris's feedback pulling designs back to reality.
The ship's got to be cool. But we haven't shied away from it. We've moved away from just deliberate rule-of-cool stuff. It's a lot more informed.
So you're admitting that for at least a little while we were very rule of cool.
It seems like a trick question, but let's just say that we're a lot more considered now. There's the functionality, which is king, but then it does have to look badass, and Chris never lets us get away with it, do you know what I mean? We all know I've had some horrors in my past, but we always get there. So sometimes it's just difficult, isn't it? You're reliant on the artist, and you're literally just starting with a blank piece of paper, and it's like, okay, how do we make this super cool thing that's not been seen before, that hopefully doesn't get accused of being someone else's ship, even if it's not, all that sort of stuff. And so it's always a bit of a struggle, because sometimes functionality does define where you end up at, especially if you're making a realistic kind of game. If we do something just utterly ridiculous or fantastical, Chris is just going to go, no, that wouldn't work. And so you're brought back to reality. And again, that affects the strokes of the pen, basically.