Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1546054
106 M PS E . O R G Eric Marks MPSE: As an audio team working on a big sequel like this, what were some of your initial goals going into starting work on Borderlands 4? Mark Petty, Managing Director of Audio: There was the push toward more of an open world than in the previous games, which raised some questions about how we had treated things in the past, particularly music. We historically have done persistent music cues through ambient and combat. We wanted to add some dynamics and take advantage of open space. On the sound design side, we learned a lot about our process from Borderlands 3 (BL3). We wanted to change the way that we were designing content, including doing a lot more palette building, front end work, and more conceptual work—both in collecting source sounds, and also in the way that we were building palettes to allow us to make creative decisions early on. This allowed us to invest time and the mind share into a more creative space than just being task driven. Brian Fieser, Sound Design Director: Yeah, we learned a lot from Borderlands 3. We knew going into Borderlands 4 that this was going to be a much bigger game, both in scope systems, the streamlined open world, and our team size was growing too. One of the objectives was to maintain a level of cohesion across the sound design in the game, so we built a sound design bible that defines the aesthetic of the game, outlines our process, and then we ramped up where we apply our style guides. On Borderlands 3, we created style guides for the major beats, mostly centered around the weapons and defining the aesthetic of the manufacturers for all the different weapons. We evolved that into everything that we did for Borderlands 4 for characters, lootables, weapons, vehicles … pretty much everything. EM: You mentioned that the team had grown significantly on this title. How big was your audio team overall on Borderlands 4? MP: We had 19 audio designers on the project. But in the early stages of Borderlands 4, it was about half that size. By the end of it, we were an audio team in Frisco and in Canada, so all of Gearbox Audio was on the project. After Brian defined the sound design pillars and the bible of the overarching tone of the game, we asked our designers to come up with style guides for characters, creatures, and other assets. We would ask our team members "what is your vision for that character?" It was a great exercise in team cohesion because it gave everyone more ownership over the assets themselves. It gave them creative interest because it was coming from them. Brian was great at mentoring those folks and calling out the questions based upon their own designs, and then having those designers reach across the aisle, talk to the art department, animation, etc. We wanted them to make those points of contact and foster a more creative, collaborative workflow that audio doesn't often get because our work becomes very reactive. EM: Early in the process, how do you go about collecting that information from other teams and getting on people's radars early on? BF: It's hard to do. A lot of it started with collaborating with the concept art department, because they're at the forefront of development, and we wanted to be right there alongside them. From there, we also built out a questionnaire to sync up with the design team. It said things like, "How does this particular creature behave in its environment?" MP: We'd also include questions like "Is there lore attached to this creature?" We thought about how we could lean into aspects of the creeps, for instance. We spent a lot of time trying to sonically define what that lore is. It also opened up the conversation about what a creature is going to do. When we become involved and we start talking systemically, we'd ask other departments "what can we do to support? How can we make this do a thing that you want them Andrew Cheney, Jesse Lemons and Brian Fieser mixing Borderlands 4.