- [hacking computer sound] - I really like the section of this map. - Yeah. And we talked in the mix. We can just turn it down. [loud video game sound] - That got me. - That's a good one. Yeah. - That got me real good. That worked out nice. - Yeah. [suspenseful music] [hacking computer sound] - Nassim, you ready for me? - [Nassim] No. - All right. So we're here in one of the audio bays and I'm here with our audio director. Nassim. We don't really argue about this too much, but I believe that the music, it's not just music, right? - Yeah. The thing about music for this type of game is that it serves as a tool, and we really wanna blur the lines between ambience and music. We wanna serve music as a tool to go ahead and support a scene. But similarly, we want to set a mood. And for a game like ours, mood is everything. [loud metallic thud] - [Glen] There's different kinds of motors and machines in the game and we'll say make them scary. You could just make a motor sound like a motor, but you could deepen it or whatever. And so, we try and think of scary for everything we do. What makes Callisto protocol scary? It starts with tension, making sure there's creepy stuff going on. There's weird sounds in the background. The music that's awful [eerie sound], you know, we've been looking at games, but it's more the movies that will start new trends. [hacking computer sound] First saw it in Sicario 2, believe it or not. [deep beat sound] One of the trend that we started seeing is the low sound that would Mmm, Right. - A lot of baritone downers. Just an ominous use of a base tone or a cello. It really sets the mood. It seems to be the trend lately, and we kind of vibed with it and rolled with it. Yeah. [ominous sound] I think it certainly matches the, the soundscape or the landscape a little more. - You think that's gonna go well with the uh, [deeper ominous sound] That's cool. - Yeah, let's play it some more. - We'll keep it, we'll keep it down a little bit lower so we hit a win still. [deeper ominous sound] - Let's go for a walk. - Seeing a mountain in the background, or going on this when that sound goes on. - When it crests. - Yeah. Would be great. I don't know if we can time it that well though. Can we? - Totally. We have all, we have all our music in stems, so the higher frequency stuff is one stem. We can use triggers when we go over specific landscapes to play these lower kind of brams. [ominous sound] - Doesn't, doesn't that sound like, Oh man, I'm seeing something different I haven't seen before. - Yeah. - Like what is this thing. - Exactly? Is this an alien? Is this alien tech? Is this human made? What is this stuff? [high pitched eerie sound] This one has some low hits on it. - That feels like an interior to me. - Gotcha. Well let's take a listen to something else. [deep eerie sound] - Maybe it's, it's kind of, [deep suspenseful sound] Well, that's pretty neat. - It's got some little. - I dunno if that's an exterior though. That's a good one. So let's. - Let's heck out another. - Yeah, Okay. - [Nassim] The first thing Glen and I ever talked about was music and how important music was to the horror genre. Glen is super passionate about the genre, and music is maybe the most effective tool from an audio perspective to apply tension, foreshadowing, lead up, build up, and you know, craft special moments. [Zombie grunts sounds] [loud thud] There's two types of doom drones that we're kind of using to make tension while in combat. Some are a little more intense than others, and what's cool about these is that we have these in separate layers, so we could choose at what point in combat, depending on how much progress you're making to start, like unlocking some extra layers. [high pitched sound][grunting sounds] - [Glen] Sound effects are a layer. Then there's a layer of the music. And music doesn't always mean like beautiful music. It is composed, but it can be weird and, and it really sets the tone. [deep brassy sound] - [Nassim] We were lucky enough to get an apprehension engine made for the studio and specifically for the title. This cool device was actually made by a bunch of sound designers that served other Hollywood horror movies over the years. [High piercing sound] So they took it upon themselves to build this concoction, this device, which is half instrument [airy sound] half noise maker. - I've only heard about it using Hollywood, so I, I don't know of any game that's that's used it yet. [hypnotic sound] - You wanna hear some apprehension engine. - Oh, you bet. - Check this out. So we got longer ones and we got shorter ones that we hope to sprinkle. [apprehension engine sound] It's got a bit of an arrival vibe. - Which we want more horror. Yeah. - And then we have shorter cues that we just play as little brands or splashes. [deep eerie atonal sound] I'm particularly fond of this part of the instrument. It almost sounds like violins. - Have you seen the Ozarks? - Yes. You're. Yes - It kind of has that. - That vibe to it. - Yeah. I don't think it's quite us, but keep going. - What's cool about these types of elements is that we could play 'em on top of like other textures. So sometimes we just have these textures and on top of that. [Whooshing textured sound] - It sounds like something's alive. - Kinda. - Way deep in that. - A vocal element, hey, almost for tunnels would be relatively useful. - I love the apprehension engine, man. - It's beautiful. - What a good find. - [Nassim] It's awesome. I'm really happy we have it. Yeah. - At first we were kind of randomly putting it through the game. Now we're kind of triggering them so that we know exactly where that sound is gonna come up, so it adds something to it. Okay. Let's make it a little bit louder as you get to the door or get some apprehension engine in here. [startling sound] Well, we talk a lot about timing. When you have a scare moment, we usually have a stinger. You have to be within a 10th of a second of it. So timing is everything. - Film is linear, which is awesome in the sense that you could plan everything out and the composer knows exactly where to place his pieces. The beauty about interactive audio is we have a lot more control of what we decide to play when, [eerie sound] and we work with the composers to break apart the different segments and the different layers and stems so that we can choose when to emphasize a specific brams or a specific stinger. We play the game, we identify key moments and we break it apart and we're able to have more control. [eerie sound] [loud thud] Based off our conversation Last week, I wanted to make sure that we really emphasize a stinger on this next scare. [suspenseful sound] Here we go. [loud metallic thuds] - I think because the door is so - loud, - Loud, chunky. - that feels like a nine, and then you go to a 10 so it doesn't feel like enough contrast. - Gotcha. - Does that make sense? - Yeah. I think we should turn down the door, and maybe up the stinger so we carve out room for it. - Yeah. This is the fun part, but with horror Man, it is all about timing. Right? We can't miss a sound by, you know, a hundredth of second. It's just, it won't sound. Right - [Nassim] Sync is absolutely everything at this point. All right, let's go. I gotta remember where he lives. [loud piercing sound] There it is. [loud eerie sound] - So I would turn the tell down. - Gotcha. - It was so loud, but I didn't know what to be scared of cuz nothing hit me. If you turn the tell down and keep the, the hit where it's at, it'll be scary. - Gotcha. - Right now it's like it gave it away a little bit. - Good notes. - Yeah. - I can fix that pretty quick. - Being honest with you, if gameplay didn't want it, I would just take the tell out altogether, but. - [Nassim] It happened so quick for other enemies. The tell is useful cuz you know they're coming here. Here it's, we want, we kind of wanna surprise the player. - Yeah, because they have time. - Yeah, yeah. Exactly. - Well, don't take it out until I talk to design. - Yeah, gotcha. - But, if you could turn it down, keep the, [grunting] there's like kind of a monster sound before, but it needs a stinger. He can be scary every time. - No doubt. [gunshot] - [Glen] The hardest part with, with audio is it comes in so late cuz it has to come in after almost everything's in because how do you put a sound to something if it's not in the game yet? Right. Let's say an an artist puts a drip in the level, we gotta have a sound. So, we need to have almost everything in. Now, mostly your monsters have been done by that group down in Hollywood that just does monsters. - Yeah. So we were really lucky to partner again with David Farmer from Sky Sound. - Right, right. - Who really helped us with a bunch of creature vocalizations. [blood gushing sound] - That stinger could go way up. - Oh, way up. Yeah. I was thinking the same thing. Matter of fact, it was very quiet leading up. - Agreed. I think all things blood worm for that scene need to, to go up like plus nine. - In the mix because it's quiet. We can just turn down the footsteps. So we're gonna do that anyway. - Yeah - When we do the make. - what's cool, we have it actually set up in such a way where we could actually control fully dynamically. So if it's a really, really loud room, lots of steam, like big machinery, we could actually crank it up so it cuts through the mix. This is the, - Okay. All right. - This is a quintessential example of a quiet environment where we could control that and bring it down. - Yeah. Okay. You know what I like doing with, with Nassim is, you know, he's got machines around and it's like make them scary. Your room's really loud now, right? Did you get to that yet? - We're still working on the gear room. The whole idea with the gear room is we want to make it uncomfortable. - Uncomfortable. Yeah. Yeah - [Nassim] Just massively loud. Essentially what we're doing there is we're actually positioning every element of the gear room. The cool thing about that is, if as I'm getting pushed by these enemies closer to these menacing gears, that's gonna be the focus of the sound. [clinking sound] It actually is gonna work out pretty nicely. - You know how that's gonna sound on headphones? Well, you were listening to it on headphones. - [Nassim] Working with Glen's been awesome because Glen has hired directors that have had a fair amount of experience doing this genre and these types of games. And so, while he has an overall vision, he essentially works with his directors to kind of materialize that vision and oftentimes we bring ideas he may have not had. - Oh yeah, Yeah, - And everything falls into place. - There is a lot of going back and forth. It's one of the places that I, I just love to spend time working on and the audio team is fantastic. I could tell 'em up front. Nassim gets it, gets it to his team. I'm just doing 10% of the tweaks after that. See ya man. Thanks. [static sound] [beeping sound]