itches
in
masseffect
Mugshots
The Bioware Blog recently made a post about the caffine containers various Bioware Staffers use. There's more of it behind the link, I just wanted to draw attention to this part.
This mug belongs to Sylvia Feketekuty and is a survivor of a set of mugs Karin Weekes made for the ME3 writing pit just before Mass Effect 3 went gold. The game includes a “cave drawing” of a krogan riding a dinosaur, and these mugs celebrate the team moment that lead to it: John Dombrow had several awesome dinosaurs on his desk, and Karin had a Grunt action figure on hers. During various spirited writer room discussions, Grunt MAY have ridden a few dinosaurs. This was around the time Preston Watamaniuk, our Lead Designer, wanted the writing team to do some ambient planet-scan-and-collect missions related to general war assets, and he’d written out an asset list for us.
Patrick: HE thought he was putting in general examples, but >I< thought he wanted exactly what he had written in there. Like “Fossilized Kakliosaur,” which I looked at and went, “How the heck am I supposed to make that help the war effort?”
Sylvia: At which point a “Jurassic Park dinosaur-in-amber” discussion started. We were all maybe a little punchy, which explains why it seemed like such a great idea.
Karin: So Patrick wrote it up and sent them back for review. When Preston subsequently came into the room to say, “Wait, WHAT is going ON in here? You actually made kakliosaurs?”, we launched into a simultaneous, impassioned defense of the idea. Preston remained dubious until John put Grunt on the T-Rex to illustrate the awesomeness of KROGAN RIDING DINOSAURS, and that stunning visual won him over.
John: About that time, I needed a cave painting in the Genophage mission to show off ancient krogan cave art. Thanks to our awesome artists, that painting eventually came to fruition; we put it into the caves where Shepard and squadmates get lost for a bit.
Anything is possible when you work as a team.
This mug belongs to Sylvia Feketekuty and is a survivor of a set of mugs Karin Weekes made for the ME3 writing pit just before Mass Effect 3 went gold. The game includes a “cave drawing” of a krogan riding a dinosaur, and these mugs celebrate the team moment that lead to it: John Dombrow had several awesome dinosaurs on his desk, and Karin had a Grunt action figure on hers. During various spirited writer room discussions, Grunt MAY have ridden a few dinosaurs. This was around the time Preston Watamaniuk, our Lead Designer, wanted the writing team to do some ambient planet-scan-and-collect missions related to general war assets, and he’d written out an asset list for us.
Patrick: HE thought he was putting in general examples, but >I< thought he wanted exactly what he had written in there. Like “Fossilized Kakliosaur,” which I looked at and went, “How the heck am I supposed to make that help the war effort?”
Sylvia: At which point a “Jurassic Park dinosaur-in-amber” discussion started. We were all maybe a little punchy, which explains why it seemed like such a great idea.
Karin: So Patrick wrote it up and sent them back for review. When Preston subsequently came into the room to say, “Wait, WHAT is going ON in here? You actually made kakliosaurs?”, we launched into a simultaneous, impassioned defense of the idea. Preston remained dubious until John put Grunt on the T-Rex to illustrate the awesomeness of KROGAN RIDING DINOSAURS, and that stunning visual won him over.
John: About that time, I needed a cave painting in the Genophage mission to show off ancient krogan cave art. Thanks to our awesome artists, that painting eventually came to fruition; we put it into the caves where Shepard and squadmates get lost for a bit.
Anything is possible when you work as a team.