How AAA Games Turn Grey Boxes into Living Worlds

You just presented your futuristic city to the investors. They loved it. They only had one question: why is it set in space if they prefer medieval taverns? 

Please update it by Friday.

Welcome to a world builder’s weekday.

↓ Artwork by Lilian Chow

Lilian Chow has worked on large scale open world games at EA, Ubisoft, and Arkane, contributing to projects including Watch Dogs 2, Watch Dogs: Legion, Far Cry 6, Redfall, and Skate. 

In this interview, Lilian explains what world builders actually do, how game environments move from an early idea to a playable location, and how teams estimate, build, and reuse the enormous number of elements that make a world feel complete. 

Main Topics

• AAA world building
• Environment art
• Level design
• Modular environments
• Procedural tools

Interview with Former EA, Ubisoft, and Arkane World Builder Lilian Chow

Q: To start, could you explain to the rest of the game development crew what a world builder actually does, and how the role differs from an environment artist or level designer?

A world builder is essentially a generalist role that sits at the intersection of level design, environment art, lighting, like a glue between those departments. It’s also always a role responsible for a large scale area, which means working with terrain as much as with mega structures.

It demands a lot of adaptability, since most AAA studios run their own in-house engine that you need to learn fast, most of the time is spent inside the engine and custom tools
than a 3D modeler typically would.

↓ Artwork by Lilian Chow

Where the overlap happens: with environment art, it’s modeling and texturing; with lighting, it’s the early lighting intention passes before a dedicated lighting artist takes over; with level design,I need to understand the level intent well enough that I’m not obstructing gameplay when detailing the level and space.

How much of each depends heavily on the studio and project. Some projects more environment art heavy, where world builders spend a lot of time modeling and detailing the level. Others, Ubisoft for example, are more of a level artist role, where you still do blockouts, but most time is spent in engine building the level using in house tools.

On a smaller or more flexible team, like at Arkane, I’ve owned the whole level myself, doing the level design, level art, lighting and set dressing all at once.

Q: Once we understand the role, what does the world-building process usually look like from the first idea to the final playable environment?

Reference/Brief : The process usually begins with whatever reference or brief I can get, and that varies a lot by project. For a hyperrealistic project like Watch Dogs or Far Cry, I’d get real world reference photos from the actual location or from scouting trips, and I would track down the rest of the reference myself.

For a stylized project like Redfall, I’d get a background story of the location instead: what the place is, who it belongs to, what type of structure it is, a store, a home, a museum. For Skate, I sometimes get concept art along with reference pictures from real world locations. So depending on the project, I’m working from photos, from narrative or from concept art, and when there’s a blank I make things up. Environmental storytelling is really important to make an environment feel lived in and real.

Environment of “Zone 2” industrial area from the 2001 anime movie Metropolis, made and rendered in Unreal Engine 5 Credit: Lilian Chow ↓ 

Original frame for the 2001 anime film Metropolis Credit: KUSAMORI Shuichi Animation Artworks ↓ 

Typical workflow : From there, a typical workflow looks like this: I either start the blockout myself, or I inherit one from a level designer and refine it, sometimes handing it back and forth. Then I do asset callouts for props, which either go to the in house environment art team or get outsourced, and move on to texturing, modeling and detailing the level structures and environment myself. I place lighting intentions to guide the player through the space, handle set dressing, and finish with a detail pass, a performance pass and debugging to get the level playable and up to visual and performance quality. 

Responsibilities: Responsibilities divide based on the type of work. Anything gameplay related belongs to level design. I model and texture the structures and handle set dressing. The environment art team takes care of the props, and once the lighting artist takes over the lighting from my intention, I don’t touch the lighting in the level anymore. 

Different stages of development : The environment moves through phases of completion, usually defined by production early on. For example, “Completion Level 1” might mean the blockout is approved. “Completion Level 2” might mean base set dressing is placed and material intentions are applied to assets and structures, with gameplay signing off on the set dressing placement. “Completion Level 3” would mean the full detail set dressing pass, with all modeling completed, the level running without performance issues and all bugs fixed. 

Each milestone gets a review, and the level doesn’t move to the next stage until it passes. Art direction is defined from the beginning and stays the throughline for those reviews. Playtests are

ongoing, with a dedicated testing team, and I also do playtests myself and report any bugs I find. 

Q: Players usually do not think about why they turn left, notice a landmark, or understand where to go. How can a game world guide them without constantly using arrows, markers, or written instructions?

Because of the nature of open world games, where players are free to go anywhere, the most important thing is that they don’t get lost, even without a map. So building a mental map for the player is really important. Landmarks are the most common way to do this. If a player can locate themselves just by looking around the environment, that’s a strong sign the space is working. It makes sense to spread landmarks across different spots on the map, so no matter which direction a player is facing, they have something to orient themselves by. 

Silhouette, elevation and color all reinforce that mental map at a larger scale. On Far Cry 6, the map is split into three main regions, each with a distinct biome, and the mountain in each region actually have different shape language. The colour of the soil and foliage shifts too. These differences are subtle, but noticeable enough that players can tell which faction’s region they are standing in just from the skyline and colour of the foliage/surroundings, without needing a map to tell them. 

Panoramic vista screenshot showing the three distinct mountain ranges and biomes of Far Cry 6, credit: Andrejs Verlis, Director of Geography ↓ 

When it comes to guiding players within a level itself, composition and lighting do most of the work as invisible pointers. Composition involves building eye-catching structures or set dressing that naturally draws a player’s attention toward where you want them to go. Lighting works even more directly, since the human eye is naturally drawn to areas with the highest contrast, which makes it one of the most effective tools for guiding navigation without the player even noticing they are being guided.

Vampire’s nest level from Redfall, showing layered player guidance in a single shot: train tracks lead the eye directly into the house, debris is piled to reinforce the path, a bright street light and warm interior light pull focus toward the entrance, and a saturated red glow on the rooftop grabs attention from a distance. Level by Lilian Chow, Redfall © Bethesda / Arkane Austin ↓

Q: Large open worlds contain thousands of buildings, streets, props, and natural elements. How do AAA studios build all of this without creating every part by hand?

Modular kits are the basic building block, but at AAA open world scale you need real systems to manage it, usually an object bank team tracking everything being created so nothing similar gets built twice.

Procedural tools built on top of the kis, On Skate, buildings were built with a custom Frostbite tool using Houdini with modular kit pieces, which sped things up massively. When a new version of building tool rolled out, I had to implement it to replace existing buildings, and I converted over 200 buildings in a couple months, a number that would be impossible if I were just assembling kit pieces by hand.

As a world builder, I am also the one calling out new assets, so I need to know what’s already available in the content browser and only request something new when it’s actually needed.

Reusing assets creatively is part of the job, and it saves a huge amount of production time and resources. 

 Row of Federalist style building in Skate, credit: Lilian Chow. To break up repetition across a repeated building type, I varied height, added fire escapes, AC units, flower planters, string lights to some buildings but not others, and changed roofline silhouettes, storefronts and ground level set dressing. The row still reads as built in the same era, but no single building looks repeated. ↓

Colour variation is another major tool for breaking up repetition, though the example above leans on shape and detail variation more than colour to make the point clearer. 

Q: For a smaller team, the biggest fear is often discovering too late that the environment will cost far more than expected. How can they estimate what it will actually take before the budget gets out of control?

Making a level from start to finish takes a lot of time and effort, so having accurate estimates is key. Building a few complex benchmark levels early on is a good way to measure how long things actually take and to foresee challenges ahead of time. But you can only plan so far, and unforeseen issues always come up. That’s when you need to know when to cut scope, stripping away what’s less essential rather than pushing forward on everything at once. A complete level is always more valuable than a big, incomplete one. It changes the player’s experience completely.

↓ Artwork by Lilian Chow

Q: Looking at a typical level in an ordinary game, what does it actually need in order to feel complete to the player? Developers

What actually matters most is the story and the emotion the game leaves behind, that’s the memory that stays with the player. A beautiful, technically perfect environment isn’t fun without a meaningful story or good gameplay behind it, nothing else really matters if that’s missing. 

On the environment side, the one thing I always prioritize to enhance the experience is a sense of discovery. Instead of building a linear level, I try to add a few alternate routes, just enough to let the player explore and feel like they found something on their own. 

Q: Changes to gameplay, performance, or level design are normal during production. How should a world-building pipeline be organized so that these changes are fast and manageable rather than forcing the team to rebuild everything?

A good project is controlled chaos. A bad one is just pure chaos. Unexpected things always happen, things are not done on time, tools break, and no matter how organized a pipeline is on paper, performance optimization tends to eat up the end of every project regardless. Every team tries to plan for order, but the issues that actually derail things are rarely the ones you prepared for. 

↓ Artwork by Lilian Chow

After going through enough chaotic productions, the thing that’s actually changed for me isn’t a process or a tool, it’s my mindset. Staying open minded, adaptive, and prepared for the worst while hoping for the best is really the only reliable system. Learning to smile and tackle whatever comes at me is what’s made me strong, honestly. 

For Indie Developers

Q: Before we finish, what is one lesson from AAA world building that you would give to a small indie team or someone building a game alone?

Know the strength of being an indie studio : small and agile, with unrestricted creativity. If I were to build a game world alone, I’d keep the scope small but dense. Full of thoughts, full of storytelling. I would focus on building a meaningful world that makes players want to know more, sparks their curiosity, and rewards explorations. Small doesn’t have to mean thin, it just means every piece/space has to earn its place.

↓ Artwork by Lilian Chow

For Young Environment Artists

Q: And what advice would you give to young artists who want to work in environment art or world building?

For anyone trying to break into environment art or world building, the portfolio should be built around scenes, not a collection of individual props. A scene shows your understanding of how everything comes together : shape, material, composition and lighting, which is what actually matters on the job. A set of modular building kits is also a great piece to include, since it shows your understanding of how game production actually works, not just how to make something look good in isolation. 

A lot of studios use Unreal Engine, so building your portfolio there is industry standard, also it lets you demonstrate procedural tools like PCG, or even just splines, foliage painting and terrain sculpting. 

Since world builder is a generalist role, it’s good to show range, like a busy metropolitan environment, a nature heavy scene, even something sci-fi or space themed. If you want your portfolio to actually stand out, focus on presentation. I always edit my screenshots and shoot my own work using photography knowledge that I learned, it really makes a difference. 

And finally, get inspiration from outside game art. Movies, TV, cartoons, music, comics… Pulling from other media is what keeps your ideas from feeling like everyone else’s.