DICE Firing All Cylinders to Deliver the Best Sound for Battlefield 4

DICE talked about the efforts they've made to ensure that players can have the most realistic warfare experience in a post on Battlefield's website today. The developer revealed the several divisions within the audio team from voice-overs, sound of your soldiers, Levolution moments, and map ambience. 

"Take the falling skyscraper in Siege of Shanghai for example: to achieve something like that, we can’t just get a sound of a collapsing building and add that to the level. We have to find out what it sounds like from different distances. What does it sound like if you’re hundreds of metres away, or actually on top of it? We also need to figure out how the entire map sounds before the building goes down, and what the aftermath sounds like."

The post also added that perfecting water based sounds was a vital part of the process. The developer gathered sounds for diving, swimming, drowning, and water based combats. However, the drowning sounds required a little bit more experimenting. They didn't want it to sound cartoonish as they aimed for authenticity. 

"Our audio director, Ben Minto, was convinced that in order to accurately capture the sound of drowning he needed to fill his mouth, nose and throat with water and then cover the mouth and nose to stop the breathing. It was quite painful to force water around in your system like that, as though you are gasping for non-existent air. It took some time but it was worth it. Those sounds really felt right in the end."

The developer also detailed how they emphasized the importance of ambient sounds that will give clues to the player on what's going on in a map. They also put in a lot of effort recreating the little details like the sound of a soldier wearing a vest or vaulting. Recreating rain dripping from a soldier's helmet was also something the developer did.