From the Vault: Lost Art of The Lost

by IG.Chris on September 15 2010

21 comments

After System Shock 2, Irrational Games began developing The Lost, a third-person

action-horror game inspired by the depictions of Hell in Dante Alighieris The Divine

Comedy. The game had a troubled production history and never made it to

completion.

Mauricio Tejerinaone of Irrationals earliest employees, and now an artist onBioShock

Infinitewas an environmental artist on The Lost. He dug up his nearly decade-old

portfolio of entirely hand-drawn level and character concepts to be scanned in and

annotated.

As in Dantes Inferno, the final level of The Losts Hell was a vast lake of ice, overseen

by mythological giants. Mauricio sketched the levels layout by hand.

The whole thing was basically the Antarctic, he says. I still remember working on it

and seeing it in the game. Everything was all white. The Titanic part of the level had

a huge ship frozen halfway under the water. The entire thing was encased in ice.
 .

The giant guardians themselves were concepted by Gareth Hinds, one of Irrationals

artists at the time. As soon as you would get close to the giants, they would come

alive and try to grab you, Mauricio recalls. The dynamic was greatyou were

walking through this humongous ice cavern, and youd see this massive thing eight

times your size. The visual was impressive, but they got cut from the level. There

were technical concerns.

The 3D technology of 2001 wasnt quite up to the task of bringing the design to life.

We were trying to do something amazing, which we always try to do here, Mauricio

says, but we were pushing it too far for that time.

This internal design email shines a light onto actual team interaction during the

games development. The guidelines range from the incredibly specific (Hole for

door is 216 x 128) to the open-ended (Any other cool shit you can dream up).

Mauricio, whose work on cables and ducts for System Shock 2 earned him the

reputation of the pipe guy, printed the email out and began preliminary studies

right on the page. That included some basic measurement calculations.

I used to have to do math, he now muses.

Although his primary role was creating levels and terrain, Mauricio was also given the

opportunity to work on some of the games enemy characters, including the cyborg-

turret-guy Doughboy. The experience was a key moment in his Irrational career.

When you go to art school, youre drawing and painting all the time, he explains.

When I came here, I was in a junior position, so I didnt have complete freedom to

just go invent stuffthere are people with so much more experience. The fact that I

was able to go work on these characters was so exciting.

Its something every kid wants to do, if theyve ever wanted to make video games. I

get up every day, and my brain starts thinking about what Im going to be working

on.

Well, not every day is like that, he says.

This page of concepts for a money-related pickup serves as a visual explanation of

the design and refinement process. Although two elementsthe skull and gem motifs
persisted in all incarnations of the object, they became increasingly integrated as

they were reduced down to their most iconic forms.

You can see how I used to think, Mauricio says. After a moment, he adds, Maybe I

still think the same way.