Killzone Mercenary - M04
M04 was the initial gameplay prototype level for the game, as such it has one of the complex game flows. On replaying it there is still a surprising amount of non-linearity and flexibility for how you tackle the level, it's also very satisfying to attempt the whole sequence as a stealth level too.
I was the lighting artist for the level. This was the first level set on Helghan for the game so we wanted to make it immediately obvious that you were on a harsher planet than Vekta. The sky and natural light colours are deliberately heavily toxic, there is also a pretty strong colourise effect to the level too. I particularly enjoyed working with all the pockets of strong colour on some of the interiors so that they punched out at a distance.
This is a view out of the opening courtyard. We knew that there would be a lot of cover peeking in this area so most of the colour palette is designed around making the HGH eyes stand out. Fogging and VFX were a key part of adding scale to this complex.
A view from the roof showing a lightning cannon firing in the distance. I baked out a specific self illuminated map to these cannons that were connected up in the sequence. There was also a level wide post effect when they fired.
A view of the main courtyard. This is quite a busy area which was tricky to resolve in art, however all the possible routes played very well.
This is the main generator room. In theory this central core powers a lot of the lightning cannons in the level. Where possible we tried to connect the level geometry in a way that made some sense.
Killzone Mercenary - Walkthrough "Lightning Strike"