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www.postmagazine.com 34 POST MARCH 2018 AUDIO FOR GAMES they need to hunt for weapons and equipment to kill other players while also trying not to be killed. The last player standing is victorious. Audio director Haejin Lee at Bluehole Studio (www.bluehole.net/en) says, "PUBG puts no emphasis on in-game music due to the nature of the battle royale genre, so we were looking for an orchestral electron- ic hybrid theme that could give players a huge build-up, keeping them resolutely determined until the beginning of actual gameplay. In addition, we wanted to tell players what this title is all about with this score alone." Lee and creative director of PUBG Brendan Greene chose composer Tom Salta (www.tomsalta.com) to create the game's integral main theme. They began by talking about Salta's previous scores for Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Advance Warfighter, Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X and the HALO franchise, as well as the elements they wanted the PUBG theme to feature, such as powerful percussion, and memo- rable French horn melodies with a modern electronic feel. Salta's challenge was to compose a main theme that embodied PUBG's gameplay style. With no storyline or main character to jumpstart the creative process, Salta found emotional inspiration by watching game footage on YouTube. "I immediately gravitated to the singular way in which the players enter the game — by jumping out of an airplane and parachuting down. I imagined all the mixed emotions that would be going through my mind if I were dropping out of a plane into the battle royale ahead. Tension, freedom, exhilara- tion, optimism and determination — this is where I wanted to start emotionally with the music," he says. Knowing the game's theme would only be used in the main menu, Salta creat- ed an initial track that had more tension with some melody and less action. Since this was the only musical identification for PUBG, Lee wanted the theme to have more variation. They discussed refining the song's structure and the amount of dynamics they envisioned for the theme. Lee asked for additional sections in the track and requested a realistic orchestral mockup. "At that point, I added a new bridge in the song. As things developed, she encouraged me to keep making it bigger toward the end, so we arranged a theme that pumped up the ending to be bigger, more powerful and climactic. I also brought in my buddy and recent Killer Instinct collaborator, Klayton (aka Celldweller) to play the guitars on the track," says Salta. Lee concludes, "We were impressed with how fast and well Tom came to us with a revised version each time. I've worked with many composers and Tom is one of the most energetic collaborators I've ever worked with. During his composition process, he came up with something even better than what we had envisioned. So, how do I like the theme? Listen to it yourself. You'll know!" Rick Hernandez is audio director at Respawn Entertainment, where he's recorded effects for the company's popular FPS game Titanfall 2. Hernandez is currently working on an untitled VR game (a collaboration between Respawn and Oculus Studios) which puts the player into the middle of an historical war (www. respawn.com/oculus). While Hernandez can't dive into the specifics of the game, he did say there are no modern weapons. "It's all historical weapons and we're going for a very authentic feel," he says. This is the first VR release for Respawn and the first big VR game for Hernandez, too. He did extensive research on binaural audio and recording techniques that could give their weap- ons a very close, intimate feel. He chose the DPA d:screet 4061 Stereo Microphone Kit for its main microphone setup, which comes with little clips that help attach the mics to a surface. This proved invaluable during the weapons record- ing session. "We were able to mount the mics to our ears with these little clips so that we got this very first person experience, a very binaural sound," he says. They used the DPA 4061s to capture the mechanical sounds of the guns — like reloads and trigger pulls, and also used them to cap- ture the firing sounds. The DPA mics handled both extremely well. To capture the weapons' firing sounds, Hernandez says they mounted the 4061s right next to the muzzles. He says, "They seem to handle the high SPL very well. We've gone through a lot of guns and a lot of hours of shooting and we're still using this same stereo kit." —By Jennifer Walden Salta