Alan Wake is one of my favorite games of this year. This dark story really intrigued me. The sound work is also fascinating, and for that, here are a couple of thoughts from Alan Rankin (Soundelux), sound design supervisor of the game.
Supervising Sound Designer and Academy Award-nominee Alan Rankin headed a team of sound designers who, under the direction of Microsoft Game Studios Audio Director Mark Yeend, helped create the spooky atmosphere of the game, widely hailed by critics as the year’s best new release. In its review, Video Gamer magazine called the game’s soundtrack, which also features a score by renowned Finnish composer Petri Alanko, “one of the best and most memorable I’ve ever heard in a video game.”
“Alan Wake” looks and feels more like a supernatural action film than a conventional video game, as players accompany the title character as he tries to locate his missing wife. Alice has mysteriously vanished during their trip to the idyllic small town of Bright Falls in the Pacific Northwest which is populated with authenticly strange and quirky locals.
The sound design created by Rankin, Sound Designer Brad Beaumont and the rest of the DMG crew helps the game attain a cinematic, richness and depth to help draw players through the innumerable plot twists. “The game offered a lot of chances to build creepy, otherworldly ambiences, environments, and in-game sound effects,” recalls Rankin. “There is a real story to be told and the sound design helps immerse the player in that narrative.”
We are currently working on an interview with Audio Director Mark Yeend. You’ll find it here very soon!
Although I have yet to play Alan Wake (one of my most anticipated games this year, but I’m behind!), I’d love to know what Mark Yeend (or anyone else in the industry) thinks about audio levels in games, and if they could be more consistent amongst all speakers to form a more balanced sound-field. I’ve always felt that the surround speakers effects in games are much higher than the fronts compared to films (yes my system is calibrated ;)), which sound a lot more even and calibrated. I’ve always found this a bit of an odd disparity. To be more precise and give you an example of what I mean, try standing still and spinning the camera around 360 degrees in most 3rd person games and some first person games (Modern Warfare 2 was awful in this regard). When steady and consistent sounds go from the front speakers to the surrounds, they are raised in volume, as if they are nearer to the character, or us, when they shouldn’t be. It may just be a perception expectation thing but that’s just been a gripe of mine when it comes to game audio, so it’d be great if might be able to ask him about that and what he thinks.
Anyway, I really can’t wait to play Alan Wake and I know it’s just going to be an aural treat.
Will – The problem could be that often in 3rd person games the sound is treated relative to the camera . When you spin the camera around, it actually gets closer to object that is emitting the sound, and therefore it actually becomes louder. As the player is viewing the game from the camera’s perspective (not the character’s) this would seem to be the most natural solution. If the sound was perceived from the characters perspective instead, the sound would not pan at all when you spun the camera around, which would seem a little odd to me.
Jamie
You are very right. I suppose it is a matter of perception and what we expect. With newer games like Red Dead Redemption, I don’t really have a problem with how they treat it, so I might just be slowly getting used to it.