halo 5's sounds design

Games Halo 5: Guardians
1

im sure there are threads addressing this but i haven’t seen any discussing it properly. halo five already has glaring issues here. game breaking? some, perhaps. annoying? YES. now let’s face facts, even if this thread got 50000 views, and one an oscar and became the president, 343 still wouldn’t changethe gun sounds. while i think they’re generic, they probably spent a lot of time and more importantly, money to make them. no point discussing them, but what im gonna talk about is simple details.

FIRST: the hit marker noise. who in their RIGHT MIND thought this to be a smart idea? so youve got this crunchy battle rifle, or this loud booming rocket launcher, and you shoot someone, what to you get? a squeak. yeah, a squeak. how do this help you at all? you’ve got eyes, you’ve got hit markers, what else do you need? do you need a parade and huge letters on the screen saying YOU HIT SOMEONE WELL DONE!!! ? no, take it out.

SECOND: the shields. now i get the whole individual spin idea, but why does 343 think obnoxious squeaks and beeping is the way to go? its annoying. hell even lowering the pitch on that and the hit marker sound would improve it some what.

THIRD: the spartans. ok, so this has been covered to death, but i felt as i was talking about sound this was appropriate. so, the rest has been said, its annoying, its unnecessary that spartan talk, yada yada yada, but it could be game breaking. say youre hiding from an enemy, getting your sneak on, and your spartan yells OUR TEAM PICKET UP THE SNIPER (actual line they yell), then you die. see an issue? 343 could make it that crouching disables the talking s that could work. but it is annoying, they dont need it

FOURTH: the announcer. again, annoying etc, but this one i will re-hash from other posts. the halo 3 and 2 announcers were perfect. i imagined some kind of king sitting with a wry smile on his face, sitting much like jarl balgruuf from skyrim with mild amusement as he watches: he tells you the basics and commends you for your spree or multikill. now however, its like the old announcer got his 10 year old cousin with learning difficulties. he tells you EVERYTHING that you already know. HEY DO YOU KNOW WHAT SLAYER IS? LET ME TELL YOU BEFORE EACH GAME. HEY, GUESS WHAT? A POWER WEAPON IS SPAWNING SOON. HEY GUESS WHAT? A POWER WEAPON SPAWNED. ok, we get it! we know how to play halo! and everything is SO over done and ridiculously said. if you havent heard how he announces ‘perfect kill’, youre in for a fun time

FINALLY: all in all, this annoys me because… well, apart from being loud and obnoxious, its condescending. and not even just the sound, but this is a big part of it. i feel like im being babied. i KNOW what slayer is, i KNOW i need to pick up power weapons, after a few games im gonna know where they spawn, so i dont need a visual indicator. i dont need the spartans to tell me these things. has any one ever felt ‘my team mates arent talking, i wish the spartans would tell me whats going on!’. we arent stupid 343, we know that a grenade it tossed, we can hear and see it. all in all,everything needs to be toned down. new players will learn quicker than you think 343.

TLDR; the sounds are annoying and treat us like we’re dumb, tone it down 343!

2

When I saw sound design, I thought it would be about the quality of the sounds and their general art direction. We may be totally out of sync here, but it seems you are talking more about mechanics here, especially from point 3. I’ll just play along.

Hit marker noise definitely interferes with some weapons, especially with a Battle Rifle sound that I will definitely call still a work in progress. That I can gree with.

Shield noise definitely could be less straining on the ears, but not the biggest problem IMO.

I definitely doubt Spartan chatter will be heard by your enemies, and it is definitely needed for people who can’t afford mics or just are that introverted. I think I fall into these two categories.

Jeff could definitely tone down the ham, although when people were talking about the announcer, I honestly thought he would be as deranged as Smosh. Thankfully, it was not as bad as I thought.

Now regarding power weapon callouts, I am part of the camp that do not believe memorisation, though useful, is a true indicator of skill, so frankly I see no problem. People suggest that the reminder be shortened to 20-10 seconds before spawn, which I think will help.

Honestly, my biggest gripe about sound design, as you put it, are the weapon sounds itself, which I definitely believe do not sound finished. Lots more polishing to be done, especially the BR.

3

yeah i agree with a lot of what you said, i had my rant hat on earlier. but do you really think theyd change the noise? i know its a work in progress with aaaages to go but surely if they took the time to go and record the sounds, they wouldn’t just scrap them? i never played the halo 3 beta but did they change the sounds after that?

4

I was not part of the Halo 3 beta, but the artistic process involves the very painful process of scrapping and redoing. I am sure the professionals at 343 are aware of this.

There’s a reason why many artists advice “kill your babies”.

5

Please 343, take those pitiful baby squeaks out of our beloved killing and war game. This is your chance to prove to the world you guys can make a super legit video game. If Halo 4 didn’t discourage online split screen so heavily due to terrible frame rates it would have been a triumph. Don’t worry about how to notify players left and right on some information overload type stuff. I swear I will play your video game on mute if you fail to give me the responsibility of figuring out at least some part of my virtual experience on my own without having a hundred visual and audio cues thrown at me. Recognize that high frequency noises are far more likely to become annoying over time than low frequency ones. Think about a little game called Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Every time you had to click the Z button to center the camera it made a deep bassy sound effect. That’s why players weren’t apprehensive to focus their camera all the time because they didn’t have a really reeeeally annoying squeak sounding off as a negative incentive. You can show your diverse community extra respect by providing a “No Training Wheels” option for the people who have a triple digit IQ please. I heard that this installment has little to no auto-aim, similar to Halo: CE. While this is a step backwards returning to Halo’s roots, it’s definitely the right move so I hope it’s true. I love halo so much and have spent about 10,000 hours of my life playing it. I can feel how close you guys are to making this one a masterpiece just don’t slap everyone in the face whenever they land a shot with the sound of a squirrel fart!

6

Most of the guns have this metallic sound to it.
I don’t love it