Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1546054
66 M PS E . O R G FINDING THE BATTLEFIELD SOUND CREATIVE VISION & SONIC IDENTITY Battlefield 6 has such a raw, visceral, and physical sound. From the beginning of production, what did the team want players to experience? Jeff Wilson: From the beginning, on a product level, we knew we wanted to get back to our roots. Our franchise was leaning into the creation of an authentic, modern soldier experience. So sonically, we wanted to create a tactile, kinetic, and believable soundscape. We wanted our players to be fully immersed in the environment, feeling the excitement and adrenaline of our combat gameplay, leading into the drama of victory or defeat at the end of a match. And we knew our soundscape was going to be instrumental in achieving that. Mari S. Minto: Combat immersion was a key part of what we wanted to achieve from the very beginning. That means the sounds around you should feel grounded and believable, and the way sound behaves in the world should feel familiar and real. We wanted players to feel the physicality of the soldier moving through the battlefield. From the snap of a trigger pull to the weight of a tank, the dirt trickling down your helmet after an explosion, and the grit in your teeth. At the same time, Battlefield is a game, and sound needs to help players understand what's happening around them. What's dangerous right now? Where is it coming from? What's happening around the corner? When those things come together, players stop thinking about the sound and simply react to it. The audio has been described as raw, gritty, and intentionally less polished than many modern shooters. How did that philosophy shape the sound editing and design process? Mari S. Minto: Raw and gritty doesn't mean messy or uncontrolled. It means that we didn't want everything to feel overly polished or perfect. Don't get me wrong, the sounds are polished, but they shouldn't sound like they've been through a DAW. David usually formulates it like "designing the non-designed," which I really like. Battlefield 6 is a modern soldier experience. You're in a war and war is chaotic, unpredictable. It's physical. As sound designers, we need to know how we can preserve some of that character and texture in the content we create. Rodrigo Morales: We had to go back to the basics. Starting with our recording session in Southern California, we knew that in order to achieve a raw and threatening sound, we couldn't depend The Battlefield 6 audio team capturing weaponfire sound effects from armorers on location in Southern California. Senior Armorer / Weapons Operator Larry Zanoff, Armorer John Welch, Jeff Wilson.