ROOT DOWN

stablishing a base camp is one of the earliest and most important goals. Since it’s a place you’ll return to time and again throughout the game, Adams was keen to make it more than just a functional setting. This is, after all, the anchorites’ new home – so why not make came on board in 2019 to contribute visual concepts and art direction, he says many of the fundamentals were already in place. “Between Craig and [environment art lead] Flaminia Grimaldi, there had been enough work done at that point to establish what the tone and flavour of the space would be.” That included one particular feature that took him by surprise. “There were these big, thick, heavy curtains all over the place. You don’t normally think of a spaceport or a base on a new alien planet as being coated in thick fabric,” he laughs. “It’s usually a sterile, clean, slick sort of place – you think of Star Trek, where there’s lens flares everywhere. And instead, it’s kind of tactile.”