Kalona City and Downtown District - Gears of War: E-Day
City of Kalona: rivers, inlets, districts and the distances between them, iterated from a blank page to the shipped layout.
Kalona's districts, sketched over the city: Downtown at the centre, with the fort, the naval yard, the refinery and the outskirts around it.
City-scale infrastructure: the sky train, the highways and the rail lines that stitch the districts together.
Downtown Core timelapse: from blockout massing with landmarks in yellow to the final dressed district. Footage from Epic's public Inside Unreal broadcast (link in the description).
Downtown: sky train and highway links, main and secondary roads, the canal and the POIs players navigate by.
Downtown's sub-districts.
Infrastructure first: the sky train loops the core while elevated highways carry traffic above the street grid.
The Downtown island between the Kostra River and the Serano Ocean.
Downtown Kalona from above, with Oria Stadium on the waterfront.
Top-down: an elevated highway cutting across the street grid.
The sky train curving through the blocks.
Sky train and highways crossing over Downtown.
Mid-rise blocks stepping down from the towers.
Downtown's towers on the skyline.
Kalona from above.
Downtown blocks and the sky train from above.
Every open world starts as a blank page, and Kalona was no exception.
As Lead Level Artist on Gears of War: E-Day, I helped shape the city from its very first sketches: where the rivers and inlets cut through, how the districts sit against each other, how far apart they feel, and what infrastructure stitches them together. Looking at the final map, it all seems obvious. Getting there took many iterations, visual, spatial and logical, until Kalona read as a believable city and played well too.
From there I led the Downtown District:
• Infrastructure: the sky train and highways that tie Downtown into the rest of Kalona
• Structure: sub-districts and a clear hierarchy of main and secondary roads
• Landmarks: the canal and the POIs players navigate by
• Skyline: the first pass of buildings, laid down with the building tool
• Building recipes, and the problem solving between tech, team bandwidth and scope
None of this was decided in isolation. The layout was built in constant collaboration with level design: their Miro infographics and mission flows were the starting point, and a big part of the job was translating them into a physical 3D city that still read as a real place.
The paint-overs in this post retrace some of the thinking on the final city: districts, infrastructure and landmarks.
Leading meant just as much time outside the editor: hiring and running a level art team of around 12 artists, planning with production, running reviews, and being the bridge between our tools developers and the artists using their work. When a second lead took over the linear missions, I was able to focus fully on the open world.
Kalona is the result of a lot of talented people. Huge shout-out to the entire Environment Tech and Level Art teams at The Coalition, and to our partner studios: it was a privilege to build this city with you.
The timelapse comes from a public broadcast: "How The Coalition Brought Gears of War: E-Day to Life in Unreal Engine 5 | Inside Unreal" https://www.youtube.com/live/S91UEeVdspo
More from this series:
• Buildings and Building Tool: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/JwEEN0
• Downtown District: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/31bb02
• Theater and Tools: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/q0ooWD
• Downtown Photography Trip: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/LaZZYA