Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 has been hitting high marks since its recent launch, hailed for its emotional campaign, stunning presentation, killer multiplayer, revamped DMZ mode, and exceptional gunplay. However, there’s an often-unsung hero of successful FPS games that doesn’t always get the spotlight it deserves: the sound design. Let’s take a look behind the scenes at the amazing effort that MW4’s audio engineering put into the series’ latest entry and find out how to take advantage of all of that world-class expertise.
In a developer video titled Sounds of Warfare - From The Ward that was released in the runup to MW4’s launch, developers gave a behind-the-scenes look at the amazing technical wizardry that went into crafting the audio for the game. Ironically, the best way to understand the complexity of how sound interacts in this game is to look at it.
The sound monitor visualization within Microsoft’s Triton reverb system, which the team uses in conjunction with its own Convolution reverb technology to create the effect of realistic 3D audio, reveals hundreds of sounds triggers that are constantly updating under the hood of the game as you play.
These triggers are represented by text values that absolutely fill the screen, and, when the developer shoots their gun, you can see the engine react at the literal speed of sound to change all of the relevant values, capturing all of the myriad reflections, reverberations, and occlusions the sounds experience before they finally reach the player.
By having the sound react dynamically with the environment instead of merely playing a sound file as-is, you become able to experience a greater sense of immersion as if you were actually standing where your character stands. “It’s different every time you pull a trigger,” says Technical Audio Director Tim Stasica.
The raw sound files that the game uses, though, are nothing to scoff at—they’re as real as it gets. In the video, we see the Infinity Ward crew capturing audio by revving actual engines, shooting actual guns, rocket launchers, and tanks, and exploding actual cars (which I have to say is probably the coolest job of all time).
All the while, dozens and dozens of microphones placed at strategic points around the sound sources are capturing peak positional data. Seriously, it’s more microphones than I’ve ever seen in one place in my life. It’s safe to say that the COD team takes field recording very seriously.
Another way the COD crew is taking audio seriously is by upgrading the proximity chat feature in MW4. In previous iterations, prox chat let you hear approaching players’ comms based on how far away you were standing from them. However, the effect was too 2D, offering poor positional data to the player. Studio Audio Director Stephen Miller describes their past prox chat as sounding like it came “through a radio.” This time around, however, the studio is taking advantage of their aforementioned reverb technology to produce a much more realistic 3D audio effect. Voices, footsteps, and gunshots now actually reflect off of surfaces, or are blocked by them (occlusion), and reach you with better positional data, letting you know where other operators actually are in relation to yours.
If you want to enjoy the benefits of this carefully crafted audio, though, you have to have an audio output solution that is able to take advantage of all that advanced technology. It’s like trying to watch a 4K video on a CRT—no matter how good the input signal is, you won’t be able to enjoy what the developers intended if that signal is processed by a device that smushes your signal to fit its limited range. Tragically, gamers who neglect the audio aspect of the games they play are missing out on the deeper, richer, more immersive experience they could be having if their audio solution factored in things like a wide frequency response, powerful drivers, and 3D audio functionality to replicate sounds accurately.
Good news: the Stealth™ Pro II wireless headset by Turtle Beach is here to solve those audio problems. The Stealth™ Pro II is the complete package, offering certified high-resolution wireless and wired audio with a frequency response of 10Hz – 40kHz, 60mm Eclipse™ dual drivers for powerful bass and stunning audio detail, and immersive 3D sound capabilities that will enable you to hear every footstep, every gunshot, and every explosion exactly as it was meant to sound.
