Divine sound God of War

Dozens, if not hundreds of “Game of the Year” awards from various publications, high marks from both critics and players. Incredible cosplay and hundreds of videos on Utuba devoted not only to passage, but also to analyze various features of the game. All this is about the last God of War.

You can talk about it a lot about it for a long time, which is the absence of mounting speakers in the game. But today it will be about one element without which there was no half the success of the game, which is a very important part of God of War. The developers themselves say that 49 thousand human hours were spent. What will you think about the first when you remember the global snake or ax of Kratos? It is sound.

Today I will talk about the approach of developers to create a common mix, how some characters and worlds were made, as well as at the end of the recreated the sound of a kratos ax and talk a little about the music of the last non -license plate of God of War.

If someone does not know or forgot, I remind you that the previous games of the series had a slightly different orientation of the camera than in the last non-number of the series. The camera hung on the side or on top covering almost the entire battlefield and we could see all the sources of sounds at the same time, but the 2018 God of WAR has the 3rd person.

God of War 3

God of War 2018

The change of the location of the camera entailed that what before the games of the series was not required in terms of sound before. Now, when the camera behind the protagonist, we seem to travel with him, are surrounded (in the most direct meaning of the word) dozens of sounds, which helps immersion and this is exactly what the developers achieved – immersion in the world in order to feel everything on themselves.

Previously, if the enemy was not behind Kratos behind him, but we could. Now, if Kratos does not see something, then we can’t see it with him, so we hear the sounds in the back of the muffled, and in front they are as it is. The developers focus our attention on the fact that the front, and during the battle, the head of MiMir can suggest that the danger is approaching behind.

The first thing that catches the eye when the control goes to Kratos, it is a little to the left of the center of the screen and you can hear that the sounds made by it are also a little shifted. This is necessary both in technical terms and artistic. In artistic terms, the camera acts as our eyes through which we see this world and as in life, if Kratos stood on the left and made sounds we would not hear them in the center.

And if we talk about the technical aspects when the camera is “reinforced” from Kratos to fly to the dragon and show it in the spotlight, the camera often needs to move directly and there will be problems with orientation. How to position the sounds of Kratos? If they were at first in the center, but as the camera moves, Kratos is on the side? The confusion and additional work will begin in order to put all the sounds in place, so it was decided that the position of the listener will be in the center and all the sounds will not sound in the center as they should. Since the protagonist is not in the center, then his sounds are automatically shifted.

And the second reason (this is my guess), in scenes with the battles, whether it is a dragon or someone else, the enemies are mainly in the center of the screen, because there is a sight. Thus, an additional sound load on the central channel is removed, which in turn can prevent the appearance of porridge and overload (due to a large number) of sounds.

As the plot company passes or as a result of explining the world of the game, we will open new locations. This applies not only to Midgard zones, according to Norwegian mythology (namely, it was taken as a basis in this unit) there are 9 parallel worlds and some of them have to visit.

The sound in this case acts as an instrument of artistic expressiveness, it is strange if Midgard will sound as an alvheim? Although they are not as very different among themselves as niflheim from cold Helheim. Differences are still Alvheim sounds more “vividly” there more than any little animals and birds even if they are not visible. We can imagine that Midgard is a steppe, and Alvheim is the tropics, you see, it will sound different?

Embians of various locations

To emphasize the moment of opening the new location of the sound, the designers of God of War added a lingering seemingly open sound, it can be said to make a kind of breath. A deep breath of the unknown, before that we are waiting in the new world or locations.

Initially, the developers thought that ideally in their creation, you need to play with 5.1 Sound system or 4.0. Such a solution did not pass without a trace, for example, the embosses (the sounds of the environment) in the game is reproduced in the quad of space, this means that the sound of the environment is evenly distributed into 4 columns (two front and two rear). But in addition to the overall emphasis on locations, emitters can be heard. These are already individual sources of sound, moving relative to which the sound will “walk” along the columns, for example, the cod of the fire or the noise of the waterfall in the visibility zone. I want to quote one of the developers of Daniel BircZynski said so “everything that can make sound – makes it regarding emitters. Embians – a common environment, emitters – specific things.

When the development of characters for the game is going on, the design of characters that do not speak in a human voice becomes the most difficult. For example, in Last of US, so non -called “zombies” are oriented in space using echolocation. What the developers did? They found people who know how to navigate the same way, learned how they do it, namely, with the help of clicks published by their mouths and added similar clicks on their “zombies”. To some extent, they humanized enemies, thereby making them even worse, because these sounds are understandable, they are published by people, and a person is worse from what is like himself than from incomprehensible substances with a terrible look.

In God of War, mrvegascasino.co.uk for developers, one of the most difficult enemies in terms of sound design was a dragr, because it is an ordinary enemy, often found in the game. Thinking through the design of this character according to the developers, amounted to 4 years in Sovokup. And there were many different disputes how it should sound. Initially, they should not have a voice in the usual sense. Since this creature is erupted from the bowels of the Earth, it consists of stone, metal and hot lava, but over time, the developers had to engage in the vocalization of this character, since other options simply did not work.

How do dragons sound in the game now

A variety of objects were used to create the vote of the dragons. For example, sounds from car coffee when she releases hot steam and other things able to convey the heat with their sound. Of course, without the votes of the developers themselves, too. More than a dozen people worked on the dragrome for the entire development time, and when the main sound sauna designer Mike Nederquell took all the developments that were, threw it into one large project and began to mix up for six months. The result of his final work can be heard in the final game

God of War is saturated with Scandinavian mythology, but move your eyes to another part of the world, namely to Asia. After all, it was an inspiration for creating the voice of a world snake, and more specifically Tuvan throat singing.

Throat singing

Throat singing is the technique of singing with unusual articulation in the throat or larynx, characteristic of the traditional music of the peoples of Siberia, Mongolia, Tibet and Turkic peoples. This technique was used to record the voice then mixed with a huge number of sounds of various animals (purring of cats, the sounds of tigers and buffalo) to create the voice of the world snakes, which shakes the whole world with a phrase alone. The recording of the voice of a person was lowered in tone, so he became lower, longer and rolling. But to achieve just such a sound as a game took a lot of time. Listen to what will happen if I drop my voice in tone height.

High frequencies disappear and “readability” is lost, so Mike Nederquell has tried more than one manipulation tool with a tone height, before the world snakes found a voice. I used to believe that to fulfill this task they used a special microphone, which is able to record not as usual up to 20 thousand Herz, but up to 100 thousand.

Thus, when you lower such an entry in the height of the tone, the voice will be more detailed and readable, unlike the examples earlier. But as it turned out in practice, quite standard tools were used – adjusting the tone height (“pitch” – pitch) and stretching the recording.

An example of this super-microphone

I also want to note a few work with sound, and casting. Since the timbre of Douglas Christopher Jajj, who gave a voice to Kratos in this game, is noticeably deeper than the actor’s voice voiced the protagonist in previous series. Such a deep voice filled with bass, as if telling us that the main character has matured mentally, has become wiser, and not as before screams 100% of time, even at those moments when you don’t need to scream.

Kratos’s voice in the last God of War

Mixer is the head of everything

A lot of work went to create sounds, but even more to make them all sounded as it should. For this in the game, the “General Mix” is responsible for the main idea that lies – gigantism. The developers themselves admit that the world of the game should be felt massive, everything is huge and sounds should correspond and achieve this only the sound design is impossible. Working with a common mix comes here.

How to make large and small enemies (in size) are felt powerful? We already have a fairly good sound special effect transmitting volume and power for the dragra, but how to make the same troll “more”? It will not work to add new layers to the special effect, because the sound has already been made and worked out. The developers masterfully got out of this situation, they use the number of audio channels for this.

As I said, as planned by the authors, you need to play with 5.1 or 4.0 Audio system, it is used not only to reproduce the embosses, but also for more interesting tasks. We have a dragr and its sounds are reproduced from the usual stereo of the field, at the same time only 2 channels are used to reproduce its sounds. But if we take a dragon, then each of its sound is reproduced in quad permission, thus achieving volume and power. After all, when you have his breath from all sides, it is felt much more powerful than the sound coming only from two front columns. I played, although with a perfectly correct arrangement of acoustics, without an echo in the room and on studio monitors, but still I have 2 monitors and completely feel what I wrote above. I can only retell what the developers themselves are talking about at lectures and in an interview.

Mix also includes the use of reverbers. These are programs or physical devices that create an echo. Along with conventional reverbers, pulsed are used, which are considered the best in terms of the quality of the created effect (to convey the sensation of space), because they make a picture of the room, which can be transferred to the game. But the impulse reverbers are very demanding on resources, so their widespread use, unfortunately, is impossible.

In addition to the above all of the above, if there are many enemies with varying degrees of threat on the screen, then the sound engine will “drown out” some sounds of smaller enemies, if something serious happens. For example, a large troll begins to throw fireballs into you or attacks with the help of a large piece of stone in his hands – in this case, less important sounds from weak enemies will be muffled using the sidechain compressor.

In addition to the global snake in the game, there are several more interesting solutions to Saun designers. Whether it is walking on a large piece of meat to write down as a cratos goes along the insides of the elven hive. [Think, PFF is nothing unusual] or the creation of structures from the rotation of which will go into the voice acting of the wings of dark elves.

It is very important that all opponents of the same fraction (fiery, ice, elves, etc.) sounded like it, but still in different ways. For example, the game has wolves and werewolves. Wolves are weaker opponents compared to werewolves, but wolves are larger than Kratos in size, so they should sound massive.

Another important point, it may happen that the player meets a wolf and a werewolf in one battle so that they do not sound the same werewolves add something from human speech. You can say that these are quite obvious things, but it is from such trifles that a general sound is built, which works as a coordinated organism, and not a set of random sounds.

There are very interesting opponents in the game (from the point of view of sound design), since they are not like anyone – nightmares. These are such flying eyes, which in themselves cause little damage, but when there are many more and besides them on the battlefield, they cause inconvenience. If you were told to voice the flying eye, what would you do? The developers admitted that they needed a seam (sound files with a recording of something) dolphins and whales, in their opinion, this flying eye should sound like something connected with water. On top of all of the above, they used the howl of owls, which was surprisingly suitable, despite the fact that the sound is made by a bird, not a water creature.

Finally, let’s finally talk about the main weapons, now the wise, Spartan – an ax. No matter how many times per game you return him to the hand after the throw, each time it will give the same pleasure as in the first. I want to throw and throw this ax without even moving to a near battle. Behind its creation, there are many parts that in Sovokup give such an effect.

The sound of the reputation of the ax is made of 3 phases:

1.Rotation in flight
2.Small “oud” before entering the hand
3.The ax is in the hand

The first part of the sound begins to play on the basis of the distance to the player, this is not just a fixed sample with the effect of a doppler, according to the chief soundtress of the designer, such an approach to the sound would not be satisfactory enough. This part conveys the effect of ax rotation during the flight process.

Then follows the sound “bad” right before the ax returns to the hand. The developers tunged this sample in such a way that its ending always falls on the end of the ax with your hand, it doesn’t matter you threw it 100 meters or it is behind your back.

And the last layer is the catch of an ax itself, it consists of just a few samples, Mike Niederquell took a baseball bat and caught it with his hand, dressed in a baseball glove, then added “wooden” sounds from some library and the sound was mostly ready. The last stroke – add a little magic.

By the way, everything in the game is saturated with magic and such sounds at the base have many similar ones, they are often stretching sometimes air and ringing (in a good sense) to create such special effects, various bells are used, glass objects that affect the meaning. If you take a glass glass, moisten it with water and fingers, then drive them along the edge of the glass, you can get an interesting sound. After recording such samples, they are repeatedly processed and magical sounds are obtained. Listen to a few examples.

Now I would like to show how I recreated the sound of the return of the post, finding various objects at home by writing down their sound and processing them. It will be short and without comment.

Speaking of the sound of God of War, it will not be wrong not to mention music in the context of creating an epic journey. This element may seem even more important than sounds, but I would put them on equal terms. I want to say, talk about music in my understanding to disassemble the score, what chords, gamma and tonality were used. At the moment, my analytical abilities regarding musical works are very scarce, so this part of the article will be short, affecting only a small part of the creation and work of music.

In the video and article about the differences between music in films and games, I already said that dynamic music is used in games. It changes depending on the gameplay, and not in advance prepared and linear as in the movie. God of War uses the horizontal remixing method, the tracks change depending on whether the cratos in battle or not. If we explore the world, then the music is playing for research or contextually dependent, for example, you are in the fiery muspelheim and, against the background, howl of rare motives of this world. Yes, in addition to the fact that every world has its own environment, and musical topics too.

For a deeper understanding, I want to make out how such a music works on the example of a battle with Valkyria. When we still find it, calm music plays it, but as soon as we enter the battle, the music smoothly replaces the fighting, it will play until you overcoming the pain will defeat it and then you can hear the last chords of relief, both for you and for Valkyrie, because it is no longer imprisoned by a desecrated physical shell.

The composer God of War, who is the Bear McCreary, is always repelled by the characters’ characters and the words that he described Kratos were: age, wisdom, strength and muscles. Then he wrote a melody, but on this he was stuck and did not know how to turn it into a final track. The first 3 notes of this melody were spinning in my head and it was decided to start with them. So appeared the title topic of the same name by God of War first presented before the first trailer for the game on E3. According to the composer, these three repeating notes as if a stern father repeating his son again and again.

The music of the last part of the franchise gives Nordic motives, but the main elements of the series: a large choir, epic string and copper winds also remained. In order not to stand still and not let the new game be a copy of the previous ones, in terms of music, it was necessary to change something and the choice fell on the choir. The first replacement was the language on which they sang, usually it was Latin, but for the new part of the series the language of the Old North was chosen (I apologize if I misunderstood something in English Old North). Since Santa Monica Studio is located in the United States, and to recording the choir, it was necessary to go to the immediate presence to go to a place where people can sing in such a language and this place is Iceland. The Icelandic language has not particularly changed over the past thousand years, but still there are differences from the “old-fashioned” and the developers had to hire a linguist-translator to translate everything into the desired language.

One of the difficulties that met on the path of creating a new sound was an element that just became the hallmark of the new Cratos topic – a low choir. It is very difficult to find a large group of people who can sing so low. At first, the Icelandic choir was recorded, which was not difficult and with the necessary authenticity to sing the necessary words, thereby the upper layer appeared, then the developers went to London outside the low choir. So in the game you can hear 2 different choirs from England and Iceland.

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