'When making the prototype for the original Xbox, we built some corridors and areas of the Ishimura, and it looked like the walls were made out of chainsaws and claws and stuff,' Ben recalls. The signage was inspired by Japanese subway signs, since they also are helping people through a labyrinth environment.'īut the Ishimura wasn't always such a gracefully gloomy space. 'The light fixtures were based on dentist's lights, which have a lot of uncomfortable and scary connotations. 'It was a mashup of gothic cathedral and offshore oil rig-both are huge in scale and deconstructed, with their guts clearly visible,' he tells me. There's a harsh texture to this ship, which seems to groan and breathe with mechanical menace.Īrt director Ian Milham fills me in on the associations and inspirations for the Ishimura. But playing it on PC today, those uninviting ridges of the ship's exterior look like they could skewer a meteor, and your eyes are drawn to the eerie shadows lingering in distant corners of larger spaces.

At a time when 1080p wasn't yet the norm on most displays, the fine architecture of the Ishimura got a little lost amidst the jagged antialiasing and murky resolutions.

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