Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1546054
98 M PS E . O R G volumetric with a lot of depth, and on the Foley stage, we had to mimic trudging through deep snow. You might think for gameplay, we have to keep that neutral in terms of performance. Most video games you work on, if you're doing a footstep pass, you have to maintain a level of neutral authorship in the performance. The players can project how they're feeling into the sound they're listening to, but in this game, it was totally inverted. We know it's a struggle for Sam to climb through this large amount of snow. We know it's a struggle when he's got this much gear on his back. So we try to put that in the performance, even at the gameplay level. EM: Alex, what were some unique challenges with mixing a game that's so highly subjective? AP: This was a tough one. Obviously, DEATH STRANDING is very cinematic, so there's a certain level of cinematic quality that you want to uphold, and a lot of that cinematic quality comes from subjectivity, usually the subjectivity of the main character. However, this is also a game that has so much more gameplay depth than similar titles in the AAA space, so it has to be simultaneously subjective and cinematic, but also very gameplay- centric. Since there are so many interwoven gameplay mechanics, there's a lot of challenges that come with that. It's a juggle between changing the mix appropriately when it becomes an objective gameplay moment, and when it becomes a more subjective, emotional moment. The objective portion is a very gameplay-forward game. It's experiential, but there's a lot of deep mechanics that the player needs to be aware of, and those need to be represented sonically. Things as simple as, "How much baggage are you carrying? What are you carrying? What's the weather like? Are there any natural disasters? Is there high wind?" There's also a bunch of really elegantly designed UI elements on the screen at all times for all of the notifications you receive. People are calling you, you're getting text messages. You get a notification on your device that's telling you that you went out of the range of the Chiral Network. Even the smallest little things have sound coverage, and it's really nice to hear these details when the time is appropriate. The issue is, whatever time is "appropriate" is always changing in this game. There are various game states that we can tap into that are super helpful. For combat, there's a lot of rich gameplay data we can access (for example, things like stealth awareness). I think the biggest issue on the objective side of things is trying to manage what needs to be heard at what time. Everything has its own position in the hierarchy. If you can hear everything, you're essentially hearing nothing, right? So if you're just sitting there exploring, the weather is fine, and you're carrying your baggage, you want to hear all these little details, because you're actually able to have space in the mix to hear it. But when combat is really crazy, there's a lot of sounds that might be important during delivery missions that aren't important when you're in combat. So early on, we were able to tap into a lot of the game states and parameters. We also had access to engine-side implementation to adjust the mix. For the cargo that Sam carries on his back, when you're walking around outside of combat, those are very important sounds to hear, because you're still on your main mission delivering your packages. What we ended up doing eventually was shifting things to be all tied to the music. Luckily, the music in this game was expertly implemented and very dynamic. So when you're out exploring, a lot of times there's no music at all. But then when these moments happen (whether via scripted moments or from stealth gameplay to full-on combat), a lot of the music would ramp up in a way that was very useful for gameplay feedback. The music did it in such an elegant way that we were able to actually piggyback off music, mainly using its RMS data. And we were getting that as an internal value to use within Wwise. We were actually able to completely change the entire mix of the game depending on how loud the gameplay-related music was. During gameplay, there's basically two types of music. There's combat-related music, and there's also more narrative moments, like when you're walking and then a beautiful song comes on. Those had separate presentations. We did a lot of stuff, like turning down Sam's cloth and baggage Foley but turning up his footsteps. We could hear him running around easier because the footsteps themselves were a cleaner sound to hear in the mix. We also turned down a lot of the environmental sounds here as well. In most games, the environmental sounds are mostly like flavor. It immerses the player and helps sell the setting. In this game it's not just that, but it's also "man versus wild," right? Sam has to be conscious of his environment and how it changes when he's traversing through the world. So we have to play up the environment more in certain scenarios, and exaggerate the presentation and also the environment's effect on Sam's equipment that he's carrying. If there's a river nearby in most games, it would be perceived as "Oh, it's really noisy, loud, and it's constant. We don't really need to be hearing this." A lot of games will choose to turn those types of sounds down. In this game, rivers, streams, and waterfalls are actually all hazards to Sam in a way that he has to navigate. So finding ways to turn these up in a way that the player is more aware of their danger and can deal with them accordingly is really important. Even with wind, hearing how the wind can affect the baggage, and how