What would a planet fully infested with Bugs, with no Federation presence, look like? Add a sprinkle of ice and frozen methane, and you have Boreas.
Early on in development, the level design team of Starship Troopers: Extermination settled on exploring a frozen, Bug-ridden world with a canyon running in-between plateaus, with caves populating them. We were keen on pushing the verticality of this level, which would visually also help us convey the shattered look of the planet.
The Bug Meteor feature above exists as a reference to the first 1997 Starship Troopers movie: Boreas was a toxic, frozen wasteland before it was hit with the Bug Meteor, allowing the Bug Menace to evolve in this extreme environment prior to our troops making it to the ground. The oozing Bug gore would offer a nice material contrast between the deep greenish-blue ice and the sparkling snow.
This feature helps provide players with clues as to why Frozen Drones and Frozen Warriors appear in Boreas, as well as helping the team create more visually exciting and complex vistas to complement gameplay areas. The Meteor would also serve as a landmark for players to visually orient themselves between the two navigable plateaus (on one side you can see the Meteor and on the other side, you can see additional planets on the vista, hinting at the star system Boreas is part of).
Once we had a grasp on the look and feel for this new map, our level designers started to block out the main areas of the level and the art team set out to develop the tech to achieve this new look. It was very important to us to make this level feel different from existing frozen worlds, which usually have blue, realistic ice and white snow. Below is where we started:
However, that did not visually communicate to the player the toxic nature of the ice, instead it just looked like Alaska. So, we introduced deeper greens and cyans onto the mix, which got us closer to the concept target:
As we started to block in and playtest the level, it became clear that we were missing the feeling of coldness in this environment. We wanted to balance out the temperature contrast between inside caves and outside: the former should feel warmer than the latter. After a new lighting pass, the improvement is clear:
Troopers can see below the development of different areas of Boreas from the early level design to the final stage:
To help Troopers grasp the scale of the new planet Boreas, we’ve scouted out two vantage points Troopers can discover of the frosty plateau and the vast canyon.
We hope you have a chill time on the Bug-infested, icy wasteland of Boreas and enjoy these previews of what’s to come when Starship Troopers: Extermination launches on October 11!
Pre-order digitally from the Xbox Store and PlayStation Store, or head to your local game retailer for a physical copy. You can also buy the Collector’s Edition from Limited Run Games on PlayStation®5, Xbox Series X, and PC.
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