Without sound design, video games would feel hollow. Imagine trying to play an RPG without hearing your characters shout as they do their attacks or without hearing the VFX of the attacks themselves as they come to life in one form or another. It sounds boring, doesn’t it? For games like the upcoming Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, the team at Ninja Theory didn’t just want to mimic what they did before; they wanted to enhance things to enrich the experience further. That meant going deep into things like the sound effects they created to make something that truly rang out, even if players didn’t realize what was ringing.
Xbox Wire got to talk with audio director David Garcia Diaz and even go inside his sound studio to see what it took to make Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II sound like something both fantastical and mind-bending. For example, one of the more basic things the team does is use a two-microphone setup called “binaural audio” to try and deliver a sound design that makes it feel like a living world around you just through sound. Then, they’ll take those sounds and warp them so that you’re listening to something a bit more “mental.” Never forget that Senua is going through some serious mental issues, and that means things she sees and hears are getting distorted by her perception of them.
Diaz admitted that in the first game, he was limited by what he could do:
“The first game was a massive project with so many details, and I couldn’t do everything. There’s a lot of places where you can’t hear foley or footsteps, I just focused on what felt the most important.”
But now, he has a full team at his back, and he can take the sound effects and enhance them to a level that’ll make you think that you’re in the real world:
“For example, if you shout and there’s a rock, the sound is going to bounce off that. If a priest is chanting in a cave, you want to hear the sound travelling towards you, or the opposite if something is moving away. All of the sounds work together to create atmosphere and tension, and with this technology, we can achieve that.”
Just as important, though, thanks to Senua’s condition, the team had to “interpret emotions as sound,” and that gave them the chance to really push things in unique directions. If they pull it off, the game will sound like nothing you’ve ever heard before.
