How sci-fi video game sound is made for 'Halo Infinite'
- We break down how video game sound comes to life behind the scenes of Halo.
- The sound designers behind Halo Infinite show how they capture and distort real-world sounds to use out of context in the game.
- They walk us through the sound effects for vehicles, weapons, and destruction, along with the detailed environmental sound of the multiplayer maps.
- Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
[chewing]
[grunting and snorting]
Narrator: These are Buddy and Gyoza, and their sniffles and grunts aren't being recorded for a kid's movie. They're actually being used for ambient sounds in the game Halo.
[animals snorting and chirping]
These snorts are just some of the many sounds captured to give players immediate sonic feedback for every possible action, like firing a weapon, driving a tank, or even taking a footstep into a new environment.
Kyle: I think the biggest advantage film has, they know what is going to come next. We never do.
Narrator: So on the latest release of the game, Halo Infinite, sound designers had to create highly unique game-specific sounds to be delivered in countless variations to the player.
Jomo: It's important from a style perspective, but it's also just important from a game-play perspective that players are able to identify sounds by whatever their sound characteristics are.
Narrator: One of the most important pieces of feedback in Halo, a first-person shooter game, is this:
[gunshots]
the sound of the weapons.
Kyle: Whenever we design a weapon, we kind of always break it down into components. The punch is kind of a low frequency.
[gunshot thudding]
Narrator: That low-end thud is what gives the sound force and power.
Kyle: We'll have the mechanical layer. Your mechanical stuff is the high-frequency stuff.
[gun clicking]
Narrator: The mechanical part of the sound can be the most tactile and satisfying for the player. [cord whizzing] Think thick clanks of metal.
[gun reloading]
Or some of these sounds the team got out of Xbox hardware.
[clicking and buzzing]
The tail is the sound of the gunshot bouncing off the environment.
[gunshots fire and echo]
The qualities of this sound give a sense of where the gun's being fired, whether a narrow interior ...
[gunshots]
or an open field.
[gunshots echoing]
The variations with these tail recordings are part of adaptive sound design, which tailors sounds to specific environments.
Kyle: Like, the player can do anything at any given moment. So you have to take those considerations deeply when you're designing your material, so that it can work in any of those types of situations that the player might encounter.
Narrator: And the sound also gives players feedback about their actions, like when they fire.
Robbie: I think that's part of communication to the player too. Like, that mechanical sound actually ramps up as you run out of ammo to tell the player that they need to reload in a battle.
Narrator: And if the player tries to fire when they run out of ammo, these very mechanical typewriter sounds signify that it's dry fire.
[gunshots]
[typewriter clicking]
On top of all that, the designers add layers of sci-fi sounds to create the alien feel of the weapon ...
[clicking and buzzing]
Some created by picking up electromagnetic fields emitted by Xbox consoles.
[plasma charging sounds]
Jomo: A common misconception around a lot of sci-fi sound design is that it all has to be synthesized or come from an unnatural place.
[sci-fi gunshot]
Robbie: You have to ground it a bit, because if you have a sound that just comes from the computer and the software, it could stick out too much.
Narrator: Put it all together, you get a sound like this.
[gun fires and echoes]
[metal clanks]
Robbie: There are some core sounds that exist that our player base really gravitate towards. Sounds that we just can't change.
They will let you know about it, and they will give you feedback. Like, the shield recharge sound is one.
[shield charging]
Narrator: Hero sounds included the plasma pistol, which required a very specific type of sound.
Jomo: We needed a lot of goopy sounds for our plasma sounds.
Kyle: We were just kind of looking for just very interesting chemical reactions. And we were looking for things that gave it a lot of organic qualities, almost lifelike, almost creature-like in a sense.
Narrator: What they landed on was heating up these pineapples and watermelons to temperatures of up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, which made them explode.
[goopy explosions]
Besides the actual firing of the weapons, impact and destruction sounds give the player a second form of sonic feedback for any combat action they've taken in the game. To make the destruction sounds fresh for Infinite, the team not only recorded a range of new explosions ...
[fireworks exploding]
They also got their hands on an old piano, a prop they'd coveted for a while, and proceeded to destroy it using everything from a hammer to a baseball bat to concrete blocks.
[piano clanking]
They even applied a block of dry ice, a classic part of a sound designer's toolkit, to exposed parts of the piano, which produced this.
[strings squealing]
Kyle: Dry ice gives you very alien-like textures, 'cause it will just resonate on any type of resonant material you put it on.
[strings squealing]
[gunshot]
[car accelerating]
Narrator: The cars the players drive have to sound just as visceral. Halo's vehicle sound design was often grounded in real-world cars, boats, and planes. Like when the team rented out an airport runway to record everything from dune buggies to a Black Hawk helicopter. The team also tracked down this rare vintage steam-powered tractor and recorded it for the sounds of a futuristic tank in the game, using a machine from 1918 to stand in for one from the 2500s.
[roaring and clanking]
Robbie: If you're recording a tank, it's going to be very hard to get away from the engine sound of the tank. But if you record a vehicle like that steam-powered tractor, you get a lot of the mechanical and metal movement as it travels over things.
Narrator: Vintage machinery works surprisingly well for sci-fi sound. For one, it tends to be heavily mechanical with lots of moving parts. And it's also foreign.
Kyle: Because it comes from such an old era, people aren't very familiar with it. So it can be kind of sci-fi.
Jomo: We're basically making appropriate sounds from inappropriate objects.
Narrator: When it's not an antique steam engine, it could be something as mundane as this.
Jomo: I had to make the sound of some vehicle thrusters as a vehicle moves forward. One morning I happen to be making a coffee. My coffee maker starts, like, burbling in the background, and all of a sudden it occurs to me, like, "Oh, that's the sound I need. I can probably work with that."
Narrator: To fully transport players into the world of Halo, the team had to create detailed ambient sounds for every single environment in the game. And Infinite is the most expansive Halo game yet.
Jomo: Unlike a film, where you would know exactly what footsteps someone's going to take and what surface they're going to take that footstep on, you have to account for every surface type in the game, every interaction that a footstep could make with that surface.
Narrator: Listen to the crunch below a player's foot in the industrial zone.
[hard footsteps]
Versus in the open outdoors.
[grass crunching]
Robbie: When you're designing a soundscape for a map, make it sound like the world is alive, but it's also on an alien planet.
Narrator: They like to start with something that exists in the real world. Kyle and Robbie even spent two weeks in Tasmania recording a huge array of wildlife, including birds, monkeys, Tasmanian devils, and even the rare sounds of tigers mating. Then processing comes in.
Jomo: You start with something that's an organic animal sound, and you figure out a way to augment it so that it sounds kind of otherworldly.
Narrator: Like these goose calls they recorded ...
[geese quacking]
and then slowed down by 500% to make them sound significantly more unsettling.
[roaring]
[roaring and gunshots]
Some animal sounds require less manipulation, though, because they're pretty weird to begin with. Like Buddy the pug's.
[grunting and snorting]
Kyle: I would just notice these kind of just really crazy, kind of alien-like sounds coming from him.
Narrator: After recording the pug noises in the studio, they used them for environmental sounds, like the sound of these space gophers.
[space gophers chirping]
The team says that in a future update of the game, the pug sounds will return for something really special. What that is, they can't share just yet.
Since there's theoretically no limit to how many times a player might hear these sounds, the sound designers also have to be wary about sound fatigue.
Kyle: Big thing was being really thoughtful about how much high-frequency content we use, being very conservative about our low frequency so that the mix doesn't become muddy.
Narrator: They have to balance those concerns with keeping signature Halo sounds alive and sticking to the original concepts that experienced players have grown to know.
[handle creaking]
[thudding]
And while most viewers won't notice if movies reuse sound effects ...
[Wilhelm screams]
People spend dozens of hours playing a game like Halo. So Halo's sound team will keep seeking out real-world sounds they can use out of context in the game to create a truly one-of-a-kind soundscape for players.