The Outer Worlds 2 - ACS Undisputed Claim

The ACS Undisputed Claim is the Headquarters of the Auntie's Choice Faction. I was the sole Designer on this POI. This is a Settlement as well - AC citizens live and work here.
There are 14 quests here - Faction Quests, Side Quests, and Companion Quests.

Here is my initial 2D topdown of the level. This was used to establish scope with my collabrators. Once approved, we went to the Blockout phase.
We were given the Ship art as our concept to work off of.

Here are rough initial Blockouts for this space. Blocking this POI out was difficult. Figuring out how to fit all 14 quests into this level with good pacing was the goal. It took a lot of iteration.

This is the Blockout that we ended up running with. We still made iterations going forward, but this was essentially the shape we ended up with.
A tram takes the player between the disconnected spaces.

The Landing Pad is the place the player loads into whenever they come here. This was my first blockout.
Showing AC ships here tells a story through the environment - the player gets a sense of how this place functions as a space station for the faction.

This is the final result of the Landing Pad. I worked with the Env. Artist to really push the Auntie's Choice vibe here. Tons of advertisements and visual clutter are front and center as they load in - they know who owns this place instantly.

I added these types of moments in the Landing Pad to further the Worldbuilding. The player gets to hear and see what it's like being a Dock Worker for AC. I wanted this Settlement to show the daily lives of the AC citizens.

I added a simple Quest to the Landing Pad. This NPC tasks the player with investigating why/how Raptidons escaped their cages. This leads to a combat encounter - a rare type of gameplay in our otherwise peaceful Settlements.

This is the Blockout for the Team Station at the Landing Pad. The Tram transports the player to the various spaces in the POI. For Performance reasons, these chunks of content needed separation.

This is the end result of the Landing Pad Tram Station. The player can talk to an NPC here to get information about the locations in the POI before boarding the tram.

As the player rides this tram, they can look out the window to see other tram stations, trams and functionality. While all but the other stations are accessible, those elements add to the feeling of scale and believability of this ship

The largest single space in this POI is the Esplanade.
This is the first blockout - I iterated away from this, but the idea remained. This houses the vendors, Faction Leader, and most of the quests & NPCs.

This was a further iteration of the Esplanade. This was much closer to the final result.
The functionality of the space was much more defined. Pacing of the content was being tuned.

This is part of the Esplanade. I was working out how to add a window to space, as well as functional Quest space for the Side & Companion Quests in the Recording Studio

This is the end result of the area mentioned above. It changed drastically, but opening up the space made the routes to the Best Choice and the Recording Studio more clear. There was also more open space for ambient NPCs for worldbuilding purposes.

This was the final blockout for the Esplanade. The asymmetry was a big focus for me - I didn't want a box. This is designed to be just one part on one side of the ship. That leaves a lot of implied space for the player to imagine the functionality of.

This is the final result of the Esplanade. It's intentionally crowded and cacophonous.

I leveraged a Crowd System at my disposal to increase the NPC count here. These NPCs are "cheaper" than regular NPCs, so we can many more of them. They walk around and do various Animations I placed around the area. These were in addition to "normal" NPCs

This is "The Best Choice," a saloon-like space. This bar is for High Class patrons. 2 quests run through this space, and it has cool views into space.

This is the final result of The Best Choice.

Here is another, lower-class saloon-like called The Bottom Runger. Also in the Esplanade. This has one quest running through it.

I added "Sample Givers" to the POI. These serve several purposes - they fill out the space, add worldbuilding elements, free loot, and cover for potential combat.

This is the final result of the Recording Studio. This has 3 quests running through it, and there is a recording studio inside for each of those 3 quests.

This is the interior of one part of the Recording Studio.

At one of the ends of the Esplanade sits Auntie's Tower. This is a separate chunk of the POI that has its own tram station as well. The player can walk to the Esplanade from here too.

Towards Auntie's Tower, there is a military wing ("Market Compliance") that features a Weapon vendor and an Armor vendor. There are floors 2 below this that are quest related. Those are accessible via an elevator in this area.

This is the Brig under the military wing. There is a "Disgraced Moon Man" here. He's connected to one of the quests.

This is at the bottom of the military wing elevator. This area is where the player goes to fight creatures for a quest that's given at the landing pad. The player can use double jump to get to some hard to reach spaces here.

This screenshot is during the Functional pass of the POI. This is the Receptionist for Auntie's Tower. I took inspiration from some Groundbreaker (Outer Worlds 1) when creating this space - that ship neatly houses individual factions in rooms like this.

Auntie's Tower features all 8 possible Faction Quests that run through here, as well as a Companion Quest. There are 4 floors the player can get access to based on their quest progression.

These "VPs" handle the First 3 AC Faction Quests for the player.

If the player progresses through the Auntie's Choice Faction Questline, they can meet Auntie in person. This is where the elevator gets off on her floor.

I was involved in a multi-departmental "Strike Team" that worked on the implementation of the highly unique Auntie NPC. She's a head in a jar - a surprise for the player.

In this space I worked with the Env Art team to represent how Auntie has hidden the fact that she's a head in a jar. She has a stage with a fake body for all of her broadcasts and meetings. Few know the truth.

The last Tram stop is the "Back Deck Steerage." This is a screenshot of the Functional phase of development - post-Blockout iterative phase.

The final result was a much tighter design. The initial idea had too much design dead space - unused space that made the area feel empty.

With the tighter layout here, it felt much more alive. I added Dock Workers to show how people work here, and I also added "Down and Outers." Those NPCs show how far people can fall in the brutal AC society.

In the Back Deck, there are 2 large rooms that are accessible only during their related quests. Here's one that was designed to be a combat space

This is the end result of the space above. These rooms were prefabbed and reused in 3 places - here, the other room in the Back Deck, and the Creature fighting room in the Military wing. Reuse was a great way to add gameplay spaces without overscoping.

This is the other room in the Back Deck. These rooms featured combat, so they needed to be far from the Esplanade in order to prevent the whole POI from going hostile for a quest-specific fight.

This is the end result of the room above. The original post-blockout rough assets were replaced by the Env Art team as we iterated together.

For one Faction Quest, this POI turns into a combat space. A rival faction is present, and the player helps them finish their war with Auntie's Choice.

Using a tool that let us Area Designers hide/unhide content based on Global Variables, I did a pass on the POI to show that a conflict had occurred. The player has to catch up to the fight in the Esplanade.

In the Esplanade, the Faction the player is helping fights against Auntie's Choice. The entire Esplanade turns into a combat zone.

Past the Esplanade, the player has a 3-wave combat encounter in which they fight Raptidons, Mantisaurs, then finally beefed-up Auntie's Choice combatants.

Finally the player gets to Auntie's room. It's in a state of disarray from the hasty retreat of her underlings. The player decides her fate at this point in the quest.