Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1436283
68 I m ps e . o rg five seconds each could play at the same time. Memory on PlayStation 4 was a big win for us, and being able to do really intelligent loading and unloading of sound data and streaming of audio. Music took a big change in here too, where they were allowed to have persistent samples of percussion in a sound memory as well. They could do these really great up-and-down transitions of mood within the game. RK: They could emphasize things and be beat synchronous with big moments in the game. The AI system was actually feeding into the music system to try to synchronize, like are you in stealth? Then we're going to pull elements out. Are you going to actually kill somebody in stealth? Then we'll actually play a percussive hit at that moment. It was an invisible system. It's incredible in how synchronous it is compared to most music in games. Uncharted 4 also marked a massive technological evolution. People who use Wwise will be familiar with RTPCs. We got our own flavor of that called CC sounds. At the end of The Last of Us, the first CC sound ever in The Last of Us was the dumpster moving around. On Uncharted 4, we blew that out to as high as we could go. The audio in the game became the most data-driven that we'd ever done. A lot of that was driven by the ideas that Bruce had laid down, even in the early prototypes of his micro Foley system, where we're driving the Foley with actual velocity of the character, as opposed to just tagging an animation. It was a combination of a tag feeding data from the game of animation and game state, having dynamic objects that we're moving, so the rope and the hook on him were dynamic objects that were physics-based. The sounds reacted accordingly, based on physics. There's no animation that's even tagged there. It was a paradigm shift for us to take so much game state and data, and drive sounds with it. It was also the first time that we did a car engine (with the Jeep) since Jak X. That was a tremendously huge challenge. That was a multi-month project for me and Jonathan. Also, Jonathan is a Jeep enthusiast, as well as an audiophile, so he was heavily invested in making that thing sound good. BS: Yeah, there were a couple of little sequenced, canned things that happen in some of the other games, but there was no actual player-controlled vehicle stuff until Uncharted 4. PK: We doubled the mix on Uncharted 4. It was actually a two- day mix on that game. In terms of mixing, one of the features that we developed on the original The Last of Us was this idea of bias mixing, which is again, game state feeding in the game. As Bruce mentioned before, trying to mix itself. We set these levels up intelligently to where these different snapshots can stack on top of each other to influence the faders, as it were. Uncharted 4 did that even more. We got more context, more of these bias snippets, for instance, as you're driving in the boat. We turn up the dialogue a little bit. We turn down the ambience a little bit. We turned down the Foley a little bit to help improve clarity. We got more and more tools to get more clarity as the mixes got fuller because there's just more and more detail in these games. It was really important that we retained that ability to create that clarity and focus that had been such a big part of Uncharted 1 and 2. And that is always the challenge to remain focused on storytelling and clarity over whatever else is going on at the moment. EM: Naughty Dog as a studio has been moving increasingly toward realism in interactive experiences. 25 years ago, your studio was working on Crash Bandicoot platform games, but over the past 15 years, you've become pioneers of grounded, personal, human stories. What have you found to be key in translating that idea into your sound choices in an interactive experience? PK: I can tell you its systems. We've done a lot more recording, and can trigger sounds in ways that feel appropriate to the movements, actions and reactions that are happening on screen by these characters. So they feel more grounded and like they're in a world that's reacting to them, that they're actually living in that world. On Uncharted 4, we blew that out to as high as we could go. The audio in the game became the most data-driven that we'd ever done. A lot of that was driven by the ideas that Bruce had laid down, even in the early prototypes of his micro Foley system, where we're driving the Foley with actual velocity of the character, as opposed to just tagging an animation. –ROBERT KREKEL