Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1546054
76 M PS E . O R G sound design, area but that includes things like firing, just as much as reloads, while the rattle of the weapon while running, which was also recorded and performed by those weapons sound designers, along with me, Jeff, Gonçalo and Bryan was then implemented by Danijel, who focused more on soldier movement along with gadgets. It's all connected and people are wearing many hats. Drew Elder: We try to uphold a culture of open collaboration between everyone on the team, from all departments. Everything needs to be taken into consideration from a gameplay perspective in terms of what should take precedence within the mix: where you are within the gameplay loop. Overall, even though we can have our individual lanes, we all feel comfortable enough on the team to give each other feedback and ideas. At EA, for sound design, our titles are "Audio Artist," which is I think intentionally vague because really, I think we all have this capacity to dip our toes into whatever side really needs the most attention, Foley or sound effects. Mari S. Minto: People on the team might focus on specific areas of sound design, but none of those areas exist in isolation. They all have to work together, especially when it comes to what we often call the "through-the-gun" experience. That experience is made up of many different elements. Foley. Weapons. Vehicles. Voice. They all contribute to how the player experiences the game. Because of that, collaboration becomes essential. The player doesn't experience Foley, weapons, vehicles, and voice as separate systems. They experience them as one cohesive experience. It's more about how the soldier listens than about the player experiencing the Foley and sound design as separate things. In the end, it's about whether it feels believable. Footsteps, gear, cloth, weapon handling, and body movement all carry both realism and gameplay information. How did the team balance detail, readability, and mix clarity in the movement systems? David Jegutidse: We make many exceptions in favor of enemy movement. Our culling systems, that limit the maximum allowed active sounds, always leave a minimum of the closest enemy footstep sources playing even with many more friendlies nearby. Enemies are significantly louder and apply ducking to other sounds, including friendly and even the local first-person movement. Enemies also apply further directional ducking on almost the entire mix when nearby. There are backup systems in place for enemy footsteps when, due to heavy activity, per-soldier information is cut or reduced. These systems still allow footsteps to play, including when no animations exist anymore. Then, all these things need to apply to alternative methods of movement on enemies: parachutes, sliding, climbing, using ziplines. There is further heavy emphasis on the representation of enemies moving inside buildings on different floors than the listener. Everything is in service of gameplay readability. It is always trying to find the balance between hearing too little but also too much, as too much information is unreadable chaos. Still, as with everything else, all this needs to be almost invisible to the player and just feel appropriate for the situation without thinking too much about it. Whenever one needs to bend believability for abstract reasons, new edge cases open up. For instance, when you make Foley unnaturally loud, it tends to give a false positive on proximity. This is one of the major challenges with this type of game and aesthetic. Player expectations are rightfully high but also differ drastically across the audience. So, we continue to balance, eliminate edge cases and push towards the most optimal spot for the game's style and tone. What Foley details were most important in selling the feeling of being physically present in the world, even if players may not consciously notice them? Drew Elder: So I didn't touch these systems, but personally, there's so much amazing nuance within our destruction systems. One of the tiny elements that makes such a huge impact for me is all of the tiny debris you hear if you're close enough to an explosion. I remember in the very beginning of the project when those systems started to get plugged in and refined—I remember saying to myself, "oh damn, this is going to be an amazing project." How did the team decide what needed to cut through the mix during chaotic gameplay, and what could be simplified, reduced, or removed entirely? Drew Elder: Overall, we have this term we make our game by, "through the gun experience," meaning everything should be in service of maximizing immersion alongside gameplay functionality. A good baseline for us is the trifecta of first-person weapon fire, ambience, and external 3p footsteps coming from other players (both ally and enemy). Getting the mix between those three elements can inform a lot of other things in terms of where elements should stand in the mix. We give certain elements a priority score, which informs our dynamic mix how to sort certain mix groups. So, something like a spot emitter for a world object might have a lower priority score than a jet flyby. When a jet screams over your head at top speed, if you're