Audio Logs

di Daniel Richer & Dominic Caterina

Halo: Campaign Evolved with Becky Allen, Sun Kim and Ryan Schaad

How do you remake something as monumental as Halo: Combat Evolved? Join us as we sat down with Becky Allen, Sun Kim and Ryan Schaad from Halo Studios to hear about their story and how they approached this from the audio-perspective. This episode was recorded and scheduled to release before yesterday's layoffs impacting the many devs, including our three guests, at Halo Studios and across the XBOX umbrella. The whole situation got and I to think about whether even releasing this episode made sense. After checking in with Becky, Sun and Ryan, we all decided that it was best to move forward and to celebrate their work through these difficult times. Our goal will always be to shine light on the people and on their work creating the games we explore. This episode is no different. The context is sensitive, and so we're hoping to inspire and spread some positivity across the global game development community throughout these difficult times that keeps on delivering brutal blows to the entire industry with this episode. In the spirit of focusing on the bright side, we're humbled to be able to showcase the awesomeness of our guests for this Halo: Campaign Evolved episode, and we're sending all of our support to everyone that's been impacted. Taking a classic and modernizing it has to be a daunting challenge, so we spent a lot of time picking our guest's brains on the kind of thinking and philosophies they adopted when bringing this project to life. With 25 years worth of design and technical evolution between the original and this shiny new remake, the team had to assess what would work and what was best left untouched to ensure that the game felt both like a modern AAA 2026 game, while staying faithful to its source. Becky, Sun and Ryan were extremely generous sharing their many insights on all things audio. This was our first time covering the production of a remake, and so we both learned a lot from our conversation. This is a topic that isn't often talked about, so we're absolutely thrilled to be bringing it out to you all. As usual, hope you enjoy!

Big Walk with Em Halberstadt and Nicholas Zhang

Number 20! We've reached a big milestone and wanted to take this opportunity to do something a little bit different. We met with Em Halberstadt and Nicholas Zhang from A Shell in the Pit to talk about their work on House House's latest game, Big Walk! This episode is really special as it's our first time chatting with our guests from within the game we're exploring! This led us down a bunch of unexpected paths that were absolutely a joy to dive in. Em and Nicholas gave us a peek behind the approach they went with to sound the game, how they gathered sounds that balanced the grounded and whimsical, how they wrangled the unpredictable with the in-game proximity chat system, and so much more. Hope you enjoy!

Paralives with Andrei Castañon

In this episode, we're joined by Andrei Castañon to talk about his work on the early-access life-simulation game, Paralives. Since Andrei is the sole audio developper on the game, he's had his hands on all things audio. He very candidly took us across on a journey sharing his experience joining the team, composing the score, designing the sounds, facing the many challenges that come from sounding a cozy life sim, creating the in-universe language, and a whole lots of insights on the realities of the indie game dev scene. Hope you enjoy!

Saros with Loïc Couthier, Lewis Everest, Lewis Barn, Fabio Liutina, Pete Reed and Juuso Tolonen

For this episode, we got to meet some of the fantastic folks from Sony Interactive Entertainment who helped shape the amazing audio from Housemarque's latest game, Saros. Loïc Couthier, Lewis Everest, Lewis Barn, Fabio Liutina, Pete Reed and Juuso Tolonen all sat down with us to chat about the work they've put into making this cosmic-nightmare-bullet-hell such a wonder to listen to. We dive into their approach at designing sounds for UI, weapons, enemies, environments and bosses through a set of pillars that aimed to keep things cohesive, how they made use of Sony's DualSense controllers features to the fullest, their use of 3D audio technology, and so much more. The team was extremely generous when it comes to sharing the nitty-gritty details on their workflow and the likes, so perhaps this is one of our most in-the-weeds episode so far! Hope you enjoy!

Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight with Raffaele Presciutti

This next one is surely going to put a smile on your face! We met with Raffaele Presciutti from TT Games to chat about the work that's been put into bringing Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight to life! Our conversation explores the many intricacies of designing the sonic experience of a Lego game set in the world of Batman. From defining the tone, level of realism, and slapstick of the aesthetics, all the way through the technicalities of bringing Gotham City's open-world to life, we cover a lot of ground here! We also talk about vehicle sounds, the role of music, and a whole lot more! Time to turn on the Bat-Signal! Hope you enjoy!

Mouse: P.I. for Hire with Damian Czajka and Patryk Scelina

We're travelling back in time for this one. We recently met with Damian Czajka and Patryk Scelina to talk about their work on the recently released first-person-shooter, Mouse: P.I. for Hire from Fumi Games! We dive deep into how they managed to deliver an experience that feels like a love-letter to speaking cinema's early days, detective fiction and classic rubber hose animation! The team did a ton of research to ensure that the experience delivered an authentic feeling that feels modern and highly polished. We chat about balancing the level of sound degradation, working with clichés and expectations, crafting memorable musical themes, using props and tricks from the past to create memorable sound effects, and so much more! Hope you enjoy!

Dosa Divas with Chandana Ekanayake, Anne-Marie Weber and Ramsey Kharroubi

Get ready this is going to make you hungry as we dive deep into the lovely Dosa Divas! We're joined by Chandana 'Eka' Ekanayake, game director and co-founder of Outerloop Games, Anne-Marie Weber, sound designer and Ramsey Kharroubi, composer on this spicy narrative turn-based RPG as we explore a lot of topics we haven't tackled yet on the show. We talk about the realities of making games as an indie studio in the current state of the games industry, the importance of representation and VO casting. We obviously also talk in-depth game audio topics like researching tone and aesthetics in music and sound design, iterative designs, collaboration amongst various disciplines, foley and props recording, and so much more! Hope you enjoy!

Ghost of Yōtei with Rev. Dr. Brad D. Meyer, Josh Lord and Chris Walasek

This was a long time coming. We started chatting about making this episode with Josh back in early September last year. This was a month before we even announced Audio Logs. So finally, episode 14 is all about Sucker Punch Productions' latest, as we met with Rev. Dr. Brad D. Meyer, Josh Lord and Chris Walasek to chat about their work on the massive Ghost of Yōtei. Open world game design often rhymes with systemic approaches. And the team here absolutely came prepared with smart systemic designs that allowed them to craft such a wide range of sonic experiences at a gigantic scope without ever sacrificing quality in the process as a trade-off. We talked ambiences, foley, cutscenes, combat, quests, and a whole lot more. We hope you enjoy! _____ For more on the sound of Ghost Of Yōtei: On Foley: How This Woman Creates God of War’s Sound Effects https://www.wired.com/video/watch/obsessed-foley-joanna-fang A Sound Effect's interview with the team: https://www.asoundeffect.com/ghost-of-yotei-game-audio/ Brad's Blog: https://bradleymeyer.com/wp-core/

Marathon with Chase Combs, Jennie LaBonte, Jeramy Koepping and Keith Sjoquist

In this episode, we got to chat with Chase Combs, Jennie LaBonte, Jeramy Koepping and Keith Sjoquist from Bungie's audio team about their brand-new extraction shooter, Marathon. This is the type of games that is extremely demanding from an audio perspective, and so we knew that this would make for a wildly interesting subject to tackle on the show. We dive deep into the needs that came from the genre, explore how the team got to create its very distinct sounding aesthetics. Our guests were extremely generous when it comes to sharing their approaches and reasonings behind. This openness led us to talk about how they included mixing into their workflows, how they iterated on concepts and used feedback to balance things, how they've kept their aim set on player perceptions throughout the development of Marathon and so much more. We got pretty deep into the weeds here. Hope you enjoy!

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 with Raphaël Joffres, Maxance Playez and Olivier Penchenier

We recently got the opportunity to chat with Raphaël Joffres, Maxance Playez and Olivier Penchenier from Sandfall Interactive to dive into the making of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's audio! The game needs little to no introductions at this point, having gathered critical and commercial success since its launch almost a year ago. Our conversation explores how things took shape from within through the lens of the sound team. We talk about everything ranging from the creation of made-up languages, music systems design, DnB influences on combat sounds, sounding cutscenes, and event knighthood! We also spend a good chunk of time talking about their paths and how being a relatively young team didn't prevent them from crafting a massive and highly expressive sounding experience! For those who might be wondering, we did our best to avoid spoilers without preventing us from tackling topics. So while we talk about a bunch of things that aren't encountered in the first few hours of the game, we made sure to keep things presented in a light that preserves the elements of surprise as best as we could. If you're curious and want to know more about Clair Obscur: Expedition 33"s audio, once again, here's a link to Jennifer Walden's (A Sound Effect) amazing interview with the team: https://www.asoundeffect.com/clair-obscur-expedition-33-game-audio/

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