Environment- Chozo Temple (LeRoy Strauss):
As Samus descends from orbit after her encounter on the crippled Space Frigate, she finds herself in a much different environment: the planet of Tallon IV. Not far from her swampy landing site, Samus finds a large ancient temple constructed over the impact crater of the colossal meteor that poisoned a once peaceful world with the long lasting effects of Phazon radiation.
"I did all my own concepts for the levels except for the Chozo Artifact Temple. Andrew Jones did a very good concept for the Chozo Artifact Temple that really helped me to visualize how the room was to look, and it in turn saved me time so I could just jump in there and start building," explained LeRoy. "World artists along with the Art Director though made the concepts and built the worlds to a unified vision."
Just like the Parasite Queen Chamber, the Chozo Artifact Temple took roughly three to four weeks to complete. Mr. Strauss was again unable to discuss the polygon count due to the non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) mentioned earlier; however, it is certainly in the tens of thousands. "As far as texture count for each room, I don't remember too much. It wasn't the amount of textures but rather that amount of memory we had to stay in," Strauss recounted. "Another artist, someone like Don Hogan, finished off the look and feel by adding particle effects like the rain. "We have a great particle artist handle most of that. Some of us did some minor things here and there. But most of it was handed off to a person who specialized in that."
Boss- Ridley (Mike Sneath)
Towards the end of Prime, Samus is once again pulled back to the Chozo Temple to confront an old nemesis with a few new tricks: Meta Ridley. Sporting an impressive metallic shell, the airborne mechanical beast is definitely a treat for fans of the series.
"Ridley also took me about 20 or 25 days to model and texture. The wings chewed up a few of my days. It took a while to fiddle dickle with the shaders to make the wings appear like holographic energy," Mike Sneath told N-Sider. When asked how many "joints" (or points that allow movement), polygons, and texture layers that Ridley consists of, Mike simply was forced to avoid the question, stating that "Without Nintendo's permission I can't give specific information on how many polygons or bones Retro's engine is capable of handling." Sorry guys; we tried.
Much as the case was with the Parasite Queen, Andrew Jones again created the concept for Meta Ridley. "I had very little input on [the design of] Ridley. I know our first concept was rejected. The second one Nintendo liked," shared Mike.
Mike was not involved in the boss scenario that his Ridley model was used in. That process was left up to the designers and scenario planners.