Mass Effect 4 will be one of the biggest game releases in recent years. That much we can say without a doubt. However, it is rarity to stop and think about the amazing men and women who develop games of this caliber. Jos Hendriks is one of the more quiet developers on the team. He's a level designer who never really has much to voice for his position apart from gratitude.
However, that changed recently. Hendriks, in a series of tweets, revealed his excitement for the game. He made a number of different revelations that shine some light on behind the scenes development at Bioware. While none of these tweets have any sort of spoiler value, they're interesting to read:
“One of the joys of level design for me, personally, is working together with others to make something you share a vision of," wrote Hendriks. “I just saw the first pass of one of the spaces in one of my levels that my artist built and it just makes me so excited to built it.”
Hendriks then continues his series with statements about the developmental process of a specific level. He talks about how it takes so many different people to create something from scratch.
“When the cinematic designer and cinematic animator have their scenes built and working in the mission, and the conversations flow. And then audio comes in and does their final passes and it’ll sound and feel like a real space."
"And then time has passed and the game ships, and people get to see it on their TV at home, and hopefully enjoy the experience. And we get to think back of how this mission we built was once just a little outline in a word document.”
Hendriks, in his final words on the topic, returns to gratitude for the opportunity develop a game such as Mass Effect 4:
“Sometimes I need to remind myself of these things, because those tweets make it sound like that happens in the space of a couple weeks."
"When reality is, through scheduling, vacations, availability, pipeline improvements, priorities and all that, missions take months to build.”
Mass Effect 4 will release on Playstation 4, Xbox One and PC platforms, likely in late 2016.
