Video History
In-game images
Concepts by Henry FongA custom set of paintings made by the artist Henry Fong to illustrate beautifully the BC concepts.
Henry Fong’s Facebook
Backstory and world design

2. Airport (episode 2 - Arrival)

Jeff Philips (or Jennifer Philips) lands in Agrihan on September 2, 2021 at 2:30 PM [Bot Colony, #61] to find the sensors and track down the spy. The spy made his first contact with Nakagawa robots on December 4, 2020, when he landed at the same airport [Arrival, #1]. The spy suceeded in infiltrating Nakagawa by impersonating a geeky Japanese programmer, Harada, who'd been kidnapped and jailed by the North Koreans [Yoon Kim, #4], [Trojan Horse, #8]. Harada - about to have his fingers chopped off - gives his North Korean captors an idea on how to destabilize Bot Colony. This is 'do as people do' - the 5th law of robotics.

Airport And Moon

Long range hovercraft from Guam, as well as local hovercrafts land and take off from Nakagawa Airport. ( illustration by Snezhan Bodurov).

Airport concept painting

Hovercraft landing at Agrihan airport (concept and rendering by Snezhan Bodurov).

Airport in-game

Agrihan airport, nestled in a tropical forest, was designed to also serve as a transportation hub for watercraft.

Airport lower level

Taxi hovercraft emerging from the lower level of the Airport lower level. The airport was designed to move hovercraft to the lower level using platform elevators. The tarmac tile a hovercraft was parked was part of this elevator, moving hovercraft to the lower level. (Snezhan Bodurov)

Airport mood piece

Artwork used for the airport explosion that Jeff Philips can prevent by helping dispose of the bomb in time. Pay attention to the Humans First pamphlet in the garage scene opening the Bot Colony - this is Bjorn Forsberg's organization. Humans First was inspired by labour unions vilifying robots - called the workers' worst enemy in section viii of Prologue [Diversification]. Airport design by Snezhan Bodurov, mood painting by Henry Fong.

Reception bots

Original robot fused to kiosk design by Snezhan Bodurov. Tina, who does the biometric authentication of Jeff Philips, is an evolution of this design. It's interesting to note that we came up with this design in 2007 - it was adopted for Arthur, the bartender in Passengers, played by Martin Sheen. Arthur travels on a rail, like Mike, the baggage bot in the Arrival episode.

Hovercraft Taxi

Early prototype of a taxi hovercraft by Snezhan Bodurov. Bjorn Forsberg leaves in the Airport using a more evolved model, with doors opening and closing vertically.

Hovercraft cockpit

Direct hovercraft control by the player was initially anticipated in Bot Colony. Eventually, we went the road of voice control, to keep things simpler (cockpit design by Snezhan Bodurov).

Cognitive/emotion avatars

First design for a robot's cognitive emotive avatar, intended to give feedback to a human interlocutor about the robots understading and the quasi-emotions it experiences during conversation. This design accomodates 10 congitive emotional states. The avatar would be displayed on the interlocutor's PDA or on a surface embedded in the robot [Armory, #12]. (Sketches by Tapaani Knutila).

Welcome Bot

Early model of welcome bot. Cindy - who welcomes Jeff Philips after landing - closely resembles this robot. This robot would be male, based on the holographic avatar it projects (Snezhan Bodurov)

Cognitive avatar on PDA

Implementation of the cognitive emotion avatar on a PDA, which can be seen in the Bot Colony prototype shown at GDC in 2009. (Vivianne Herzog)