Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1546054
M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S 109 sounds for what gets shared across everything. EM: How did player feedback from Borderlands 3 affect the choices that you all made? BF: One of the areas that we've really overhauled based off community feedback is our audio options, as well as our audio settings. In Borderlands 4, we provide a whole host of more granular volume options, trim options, and accessibility options. A lot of that was from going through community feedback, forms, and doing some user research testing on our previous titles, Borderlands 3 and Tiny Tina's Wonderlands. We sourced all that information, then digested it and came up with a plan on how to support these desires and requests. There were things that people were asking for, some of which they weren't really asking in the right way, but we had to interpret it. Leveling up player agency is the key there, and that was our approach between Borderlines 3 and 4. AC: From a dialogue standpoint, we really listened to Borderlands 3 feedback. Due to that, you have a slider where you can silence claptrap. JL: There was an interesting story back in the Borderlands 3 days. Previous titles didn't have the depth of audio customization in weapons that we first experimented with in Borderlands 3, which then carried over to this title. Brian and I were looking at the idea of "can we break a gunshot into constituent parts? Can we swap them out? "Can we make weapons combinatorial?" We were then troubled with the question, "Will the average listener notice?" We are all sound professionals, so obviously we're going to hear all these subtleties, but was it was worth the effort to do this if the average player isn't going to get much benefit from it? We did use user research. Even apart from the game, we listened to tests and determined how discriminating the average person is to subtleties in the difference of a gunshot. Turns out they're very discriminating about it! It was a good path to go forward. We were soliciting through our user research team, using specific information about how to design a modular weapon system. EM: When you all are starting on a project like this, where do you look for inspiration for creating the sounds universe for this game? MP: All of us had worked on two other titles in this franchise already, and some of us even more than that. It's easy to get very influenced by the past titles and what you want to do better. Brian's point about things being steeped in organics was a big one. We found that on BL3, in the case of the weapons, some of the more sci-fi being "fully sci-fi" felt disconnected. As you moved sonically from a bullet-based weapon to a sci-fi weapon, you didn't get the main connection and feel from the sci-fi weapons. We played with why that was the case, and began leaning more into the transients. We brought in transients that we used in bullet-based weapons to make an amalgamation of the sci fi textures and the bullet base, and we started finding some glue there. Then there was an "aha" moment, when we realized that sci-fi stuff being grounded in the organic aspects of the world was a great way to bridge that gap. Those little subtleties help to tell a story, and the storytelling was what we really wanted to lean into. JL: Another thing I think we did well on this title was our sound jams. We had concept art for a player skill, and then everybody in our department would each throw stuff together examples and then inspire each other. Everyone brought their own sort of flavor. That gave us the opportunity to dump all that stuff into source—it was all usable! People got to pick and choose aspects that made the most sense for a given piece. That was really cool. On BL3, I made a pitch for what radiation would sound like based on talking to the VFX team. On this game, I recused myself for being a part of the jam. I wanted everyone to be able to do their own thing. One of our sound designers, Brandon, created something and I'm like, "That sounds way cooler than the thing I did. We should just use your stuff." That was a neat way to showcase everybody's talents and to be really collaborative. EM: Brian, do you have members of your team who typically go out and are doing regular field recording? Or do you outsource that kind of thing? BF: For Borderlands 4, we deployed quite a bit of field recording. For Borderlands