Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1546054
114 M PS E . O R G as an extension of our team, as opposed to just throwing things over the fence. EM: Brian, what was unique about the Foley content and systems that you built out for this game? BF: When it came to Foley, we needed to find ways to optimize and speed up workflows. There are so many different types of characters and enemies that all need Foley treatment. There are lots of different movements, and our traditional methods of animation tagging is super tedious and time-consuming. So our tech sound design team built a procedural Foley system. It was a huge time-saver for us. JL: Our Quebec studio for New Tales from the Borderlands pioneered that system. They ported it over, and we had to make some modifications, but it came in clutch. We have systems that use bone-positional tracking to generate velocity and envelope our Foley to make it unique per animation, because all of the animations move and scale differently. Enemies and NPCs can spawn in with a bunch of different parts. For instance, some are robot parts, like robotic legs or giant exoskeleton robot arms. We developed the system so that those individual parts could be flagged as higher priority parts. Our player cosmetics use this system, and the enemies and NPCs all get handled through this procedural Foley generation system as well. This game was also the first Borderlands game where you could swim or get wet. In our previous games, if you got wet, you just died. Antoine from our team took it upon himself to handle how wet you could get. If you go swimming or you're out in the rain and start walking around, you'll have that squishy sock sound added to your footsteps. You'll dry off over time as well, which is reflected in how the Foley sounds. It's pretty neat stuff. EM: Your team was nominated for an MPSE Golden Reel Award for the cinematics on Borderlands 3. For those of you who were able to go, what was that awards show experience like for your team? Music tracking session for Borderlands 4 at Valve studios in Dallas, TX.