Keir McNab
Sound Designer
Resonation Details
Audio Changing Based on Player Choices
Depending on the player's choices - the audio of the game changes.
The lesser of these two changes swaps a characters voice. One of these makes him sound like a surfer bro and the other makes him more menacing. The goal was to make the player see the character as trustworthy or untrustworthy respectively which would affect later decisions.
The 2nd decision intends to build tension and force the player to panic. If the player sides with the antagonist then the first cutscene that plays will hope to build on the tension of the previous scene by using low frequency, descending notes as the backing for the whole piece. This is combined with low risers and more realistic sounds to build up that the player may have made the wrong choice.
If the player chooses the other option then there are several magical elements introduced in the sounds with the backing using a typically happier sounding instrument to try and aim at evoking a feeling of transcendence like you would see at a superhero powering up.
The choice lasts past the final fight and the first choice would result in that feeling of tension with the music before using negative space to allow for a complete shift as the player's critter seemingly sacrifices himself. As the player looks over the town they saved it is designed so that they are in a state between sadness and wonder.The other choice attempts to invoke panic with higher bpm notes similar to the battle theme. At the end it is designed so that they feel tranquillity or joy at beating the boss in spite of losing the team member.
Designing Magic Spells
Designing magical spells with no visual aid is a difficult task. For this I created 12 spell sounds covering the 6 elements in the game. These being Nature, Flame, Aquatic, Mythical, Metal and Sound.
You can listen to these spells below.
Creating these required a large amount of research into magical texture design as well as research into the elements I was hoping to achieve. For example looking more into fire sounds for flame and water sounds for aquatic.
Town Ambience/Music
The town itself had two states: one before the final battle and one after.The music for the one before aimed for a hint of sadness through low frequency and descending notes while still keeping the feeling of hope there. This feeling of hope was maintained through the instrument choice. The ambience as well features crows which people commonly relate to graveyards to add some lair of unease to the player.The after state was aimed at the complete opposite as the ambience included the waves being close to the player with higher frequency bird chirping as if life is returning to a village. The after music is also generally higher frequency and tends to end on ascending notes aiming at tranquillity.Both are shown off below.
Lessons Learned
The multiple scenes showing the same visuals allowed for direct comparison in this exact scenario. The first decision leading into the second and potentially affecting player choice also helps to show how even just the tone or delivery of voices can change a players behaviour. Even the town in the game has a different feel to it just from music and ambience change so this part of the research felt like it confirmed the large impact audio can have on a project.Of course as this was all done with limited visuals there is still the full possibility that due to these downgraded visuals that some scenes come across as silly and completely break immersion. Visuals are a large part of a player's experience so there’s a very fine line separating something being scary and hilarious due to this and a lack of testing with outside participants meant there was little room to determine where the cracks in the intended design were.
Software Used
This project was developed in Unreal Engine 5
The sounds were created in Reaper and implemented using Wwise.
Wwise's switch and state groups along with attenuation and RTPC enhanced my ability to design in the way I wanted to.
Contact Me
For any business related inquires or questions about the project feel free to contact me using any of the below.
Keir McNab