Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1546054
112 M PS E . O R G that's more orchestral, maybe a bit less brooding, a bit more adventurous. It communicates that you're out exploring, and things are a little bit lower stakes. Whereas if you go into a factory that's controlled by the enemy army, the combat music in there would be very focused and sound like dungeon music. It communicates who you're fighting specifically—like you're fighting this particular army. That way it's more of a focused Borderlands experience. EM: Andrew, what was your team's approach to creating the dialogue system and dialogue content for this game? AC: One of the systems that we created was a walla system. We had a walla session recording actors doing various reactions and murmuring. Anytime we had an NPC spawn in the world, we played some of that walla. When many NPCs gather together within a certain radius, you'll hear an audible walla bed playing. In this title, those NPCs can also be interacted with—you can go up and talk to them and as you get close to them, the walla dies out. It's not pinpointed, but it does move around with them. The walla is actually moving around the player and phasing in and out depending on when they spawn or despawn. It gives that feeling of positional dynamic moving around the world. For the last two games, our dialogue system has been expanding with each title. For this project, we had a lot of conditions. We had a helmet system, which is the way the NPCs and players communicate. When NPCs spawn, they are spawned with a number of parts and bits that are randomized—they can have this torso, these legs, this arm, this head. Some of the heads are various helmets, or it may be just a cloth over the face. The head may even be a full robot head. When the NPCs spawn, they may have the same dialogue name tag, which means they have the same actual Location recording in Texas for weapons and explosions for Borderlands 4. Andrew Cheney at a Texas location recording for Borderlands 4. Weapons recording in Texas for Borderlands 4.