“I HAVE TO KEEP
ITERATING ON IT
UNTIL I’M HAPPY”
they’re always drinking. So that was a
way to lure her away from her post,
giving you access to the forge.” In the
forge you find a group of sailors
working for Benweth against their
will, and with them you can set up a
chain of events that leads to him
watching in horror as they sail away
with his ship. This is just one of
several ways to stick it to your
nemesis without resorting to
murdering him.BRICK BY BRICK
Another of Salgado’s goals for Fort
Deadlight was making it a visually
striking environment, and for it to
draw you into the fantasy of the
game’s exotic setting. The fortress,
although largely drawn from his
imagination, is loosely based on a star
fort, which first appeared in Europe
in the mid-15th century. “The
problem with star forts is that they’re
massive,” he says. “You need a lot of
space for defences, gunpowder
storage. So instead I created a design
reminiscent of one, but not
completely accurate.”To actually build the fort, Salgado
began with simple, untextured 3D
blockouts, some of which you can see
accompanying this article. This
helped him figure out the shape of
the fort and the flow of the quest. “If
you look at those blockouts, the
interior spaces fit perfectly into, and
match, the exteriors,” he says. “A lot
of work was put into that, to give the
level consistency and a good attention
to detail. Sometimes I have doubts
about something I create and I have
to keep iterating on it until I’m happy,
but from the start we knew Fort
Deadlight was going to work.
“There also are some elements of
the design I drew from my own
personal experience,” he adds. “I was
born in Spain and there are a lot of
castles and ancient ruins there.” But
the flow of the mission was always
the priority for Salgado, and that
dictated the overall layout of Fort
Deadlight more than historical
accuracy or real-world examples of
castle design. “You’ll notice how the
back of the fort is a lot higher than
the rest of it, which isn’t exactlyFort Deadlight
FEATURE
MAIN: The court is
where the pirates
come to kick back
and indulge in their
various vices, which
you can exploit.ght
RIGHT: If you choose
a violent solution, the
battle in the donjon
against Benweth and
his men will test your
combat ability.