Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1524863
M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S 93 does X,' requiring us to try to plug all the holes in the design. We tried building a couple of different catch- all systems to address this, but the effort required to maintain such systems versus using good 'smoke and mirror' sound design based on clever trigger placement was too much. We relied heavily on ambiguity and misdirection in the sound design and mix. In the gameplay sequences, we didn't really distinguish between sound design and music. In some scenes, we used a more music- oriented approach, while in others, it was mixed up. The gameplay music was often intentionally mixed a little too quietly. The intention was to have the player subconsciously listen more intently for the music's gameplay cues. Conversely, sounds that are normally quiet, like water drips or air-conditioning hum, were mixed more prominently in certain scenes. The idea was to mess with the players' perception of loudness and create the impression of hyper- intense listening. Because of the interactive nature of games, this messing with the players' perception works well on a subconscious level. I mentioned this earlier, the attention to detail of how the sound design is represented in the world was very important. There is a video on our environment detection technology on the Wwise website— the talk is about the technology we made for Control. It works by ray casting from randomly placed nodes to build a 3D map of the world. Among other things, we use the node data to determine line of sight and pathing for our Occlusion and Obstruction system. In Alan Wake 2, because the nodes were randomly placed, the Occlusion and Obstruction worked slightly differently on each playthrough. This led to us developing a new static node type in key places so we could get the consistent and predictable occlusion. We had a similar experience with attenuation roll-off. In Quantum Break and Control, we used bell-shaped curves for the wet dry, roll-off over distance. This didn't translate well to the slower character speed, so we re-designed the attenuations to make them The Dark Place's many unsettling locales gave Lapington and his team ample opportunity to creatively evoke unease and dread.