Oh yeah, interesting bit of trivia, I was going through that Mass Effect concept art book (I am a sucker for that kind of stuff), and apparently Virmire was originally supposed to be this beautiful resort world with floating walkways and the works before BioWare decided it was going to be Saren's fortress thing. The concept art for original Virmire is pretty friggin' cool and I wonder what they originally had planned for it.

A thought came to me about that. The in-game codex about Virmire says that it would have been claimed long ago but it's too close to lawless space to make it safe. Imagine somebody tried to set up a resort there that was abandoned and forgotten, could make for one hell of a cool/ creepy mission setting.