This thread in the comments is especially interesting as well, with someone who works as a sound designer on AAA games (including Borderlands 3) explaining more about the process and why the AC...
Game audio is one of the most underprioritized things in the medium. I've been somewhat obsessed with it ever since I found out that a bunch of PC ports were missing entire audio channels back in...
Game audio is one of the most underprioritized things in the medium. I've been somewhat obsessed with it ever since I found out that a bunch of PC ports were missing entire audio channels back in the X360 era.
I'm not surprised that Ubisoft is taking a shotgun approach to audio compression. I've noticed that their games cut corners in quite a few technical ways and always end up feeling overcompromised. Most open world games don't have the same kinds or volumes of problems as theirs do, and they usually find ways to compromise a little more gracefully.
These days I'm more focused on trying to get 3D positional audio as much as possible because audio quality is generally in a good place. I'm happy that VR has reignited the push for it after a 20 year hiatus, and I'm really happy to see Sony is pushing it with the PS5 while eschewing Dolby's proprietary Dolby Audio format. I'm hoping in 5 years, we'll see great positional 3D audio across the board on top of DirectStorage and SSD-focused game development leaving bandwidth-based compromises behind for full quality.
Well, let me preface all this with a heavy recommendation to listen to what Mark Cerny has to say about audio, 3D audio, and HRTF during his PS5 deep-dive talk. It's probably the best presentation...
I can generally trust first party games to have very good audio, Sony and Microsoft both have plenty of incentive to have their systems really shown off that way. I don't think anyone could go wrong with checking out a Naughty Dog game to test their audio setup, and they even have some in-depth audio configuration tools in their games.
On Microsoft's side, the Forza and Gears games make good use of Dolby Audio tech, especially Gears 5 since it was able to have its entire development done with Dolby Audio in mind. It came late into the process with 4 so the cutscenes are missing it. The latest Tomb Raider game also belongs here since it seems Microsoft contributed something to its development so it also came out with good Dolby Audio support. There are plenty of other games that make use of Dolby Audio, and they're generally good across the board.
What's interesting about Dolby Audio is that it's basically using 3D positional audio, not just a specific mix of surround sound channels, to achieve immersive sounding results. I haven't had the pleasure to try out a proper Atmos setup yet, only binaurally through headphones, but the sense of height is immersively presented in these games.
Beyond that, I find that generally some developers care about sounds more than others and will prioritize it well. One game that comes to mind right now is Hunt: Showdown, where Crytek made sound a huge part of the game. It seems to use some kind of properietary or undisclosed system for it but the result is that it's almost entirely possible to play the game blind, with sound only with its extremely well-crafted sound design.
Another that comes to mind is Insurgency: Sandstorm where its battlefield sounds were so damn convincing, I actually felt the fear of an airstrike coming as soon as I heard it starting. I don't think any game made me stop and appreciate the sound more than this one has, and I wasn't expecting that since this is basically a small indie game. When it drops, it is deafeningly loud to the point that it takes over your entire mind. It's incredible, this is exactly what air strikes are portrayed as in media and this may be the closest one can get to safely experiencing one. Gamespot had posted a good video of its sound a couple of years ago (though their capture isn't the best, it'll still give you a good idea of the game's sound). The devs also posted a methodology video to how they approached the sound design which I think is fascinating to see. It's clear they put a lot of thought into the sound here!
One game with an interesting approach is Rainbow Six: Siege (an Ubisoft game!) which takes a different approach to audio. Instead of having sound travel from source to ear, it instead morphs a pathway for the sound through open spaces to basically "bait" a player into following a sound to the right location using viable pathways. There's a great explanation from the devs here.
What's been really cool lately are that a few games have gone heavily into HRTF audio. CSGO was the first to implement it in recent years in a big way, providing true positional audio. Any CS player knows how important clear sound is in that game and having true positioning can be literally gamechanging. The quickest way to be accused of wallhacking is to have a better audio setup than your opponent.
Note: HRTF and binaural audio is extremely personal because it's dependent upon the physical shape of your ears. It will work better for some people than others because most HRTF is normalized across an average, and some people find themselves outside of it. If Sony can help get people better and more personal HRTF profiles across the board as Cerny mentions then that will be one of the biggest audio advancements in decades.
As far as bad... well, lots of low budget games are pretty bad since they're generally not mixed well. This is the case even with television and movies, and even some music. Audio, when it's not prioritized, quickly suffers. There's a lot of places out there to find bad audio, so I won't harp on it too much. I think the most shocking of major AAA games was the recent PC port of the Master Chief Collection but that's due to the result of a change in technology between the Xbox 360 and the PC. Volume of things are all over the place, some cutscenes still don't have their full audio gamut, and other sounds just sounded kind of tinny or weak. They're working on it at least, and have even hired a company just to fix the audio alone.
Beyond this, there's a whole community dedicated to trying to improve audio across games. There's a long, drawn out history between Creative, Aureal, the EAX technologies, and OpenAL that's a whole deep dive unto itself. But the short and more relevant end of it is that something called DSOAL now exists to try to take proprietary DirectSound technologies and put them into OpenAL to generally good results. This tech may be better known as the "True 3D Sound for Headphones" mods across all Bethesda games (Skyrim example) and it works great in those games. It changes Skyrim from having a Stereo mix to having a convincing 3D positional audio sound mix instead. It's super convincing! I can't play these games without these mods now.
This thread in the comments is especially interesting as well, with someone who works as a sound designer on AAA games (including Borderlands 3) explaining more about the process and why the AC devs would be doing this.
Game audio is one of the most underprioritized things in the medium. I've been somewhat obsessed with it ever since I found out that a bunch of PC ports were missing entire audio channels back in the X360 era.
I'm not surprised that Ubisoft is taking a shotgun approach to audio compression. I've noticed that their games cut corners in quite a few technical ways and always end up feeling overcompromised. Most open world games don't have the same kinds or volumes of problems as theirs do, and they usually find ways to compromise a little more gracefully.
These days I'm more focused on trying to get 3D positional audio as much as possible because audio quality is generally in a good place. I'm happy that VR has reignited the push for it after a 20 year hiatus, and I'm really happy to see Sony is pushing it with the PS5 while eschewing Dolby's proprietary Dolby Audio format. I'm hoping in 5 years, we'll see great positional 3D audio across the board on top of DirectStorage and SSD-focused game development leaving bandwidth-based compromises behind for full quality.
Are there any games/franchises that you think did especially good or bad jobs of their audio?
Well, let me preface all this with a heavy recommendation to listen to what Mark Cerny has to say about audio, 3D audio, and HRTF during his PS5 deep-dive talk. It's probably the best presentation on game audio I've seen, well-explained and succinct about not only why they're doing it but also how. It's what makes me so excited about game audio in the next few years.
I can generally trust first party games to have very good audio, Sony and Microsoft both have plenty of incentive to have their systems really shown off that way. I don't think anyone could go wrong with checking out a Naughty Dog game to test their audio setup, and they even have some in-depth audio configuration tools in their games.
On Microsoft's side, the Forza and Gears games make good use of Dolby Audio tech, especially Gears 5 since it was able to have its entire development done with Dolby Audio in mind. It came late into the process with 4 so the cutscenes are missing it. The latest Tomb Raider game also belongs here since it seems Microsoft contributed something to its development so it also came out with good Dolby Audio support. There are plenty of other games that make use of Dolby Audio, and they're generally good across the board.
What's interesting about Dolby Audio is that it's basically using 3D positional audio, not just a specific mix of surround sound channels, to achieve immersive sounding results. I haven't had the pleasure to try out a proper Atmos setup yet, only binaurally through headphones, but the sense of height is immersively presented in these games.
Beyond that, I find that generally some developers care about sounds more than others and will prioritize it well. One game that comes to mind right now is Hunt: Showdown, where Crytek made sound a huge part of the game. It seems to use some kind of properietary or undisclosed system for it but the result is that it's almost entirely possible to play the game blind, with sound only with its extremely well-crafted sound design.
Another that comes to mind is Insurgency: Sandstorm where its battlefield sounds were so damn convincing, I actually felt the fear of an airstrike coming as soon as I heard it starting. I don't think any game made me stop and appreciate the sound more than this one has, and I wasn't expecting that since this is basically a small indie game. When it drops, it is deafeningly loud to the point that it takes over your entire mind. It's incredible, this is exactly what air strikes are portrayed as in media and this may be the closest one can get to safely experiencing one. Gamespot had posted a good video of its sound a couple of years ago (though their capture isn't the best, it'll still give you a good idea of the game's sound). The devs also posted a methodology video to how they approached the sound design which I think is fascinating to see. It's clear they put a lot of thought into the sound here!
One game with an interesting approach is Rainbow Six: Siege (an Ubisoft game!) which takes a different approach to audio. Instead of having sound travel from source to ear, it instead morphs a pathway for the sound through open spaces to basically "bait" a player into following a sound to the right location using viable pathways. There's a great explanation from the devs here.
What's been really cool lately are that a few games have gone heavily into HRTF audio. CSGO was the first to implement it in recent years in a big way, providing true positional audio. Any CS player knows how important clear sound is in that game and having true positioning can be literally gamechanging. The quickest way to be accused of wallhacking is to have a better audio setup than your opponent.
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice made great use of binaural/HRTF audio as an actual game mechanic to portray the main character's psychosis in what is apparently a scientifically accurate way (the devs worked with neuroscientists and mental health professionals to do it). It's fascinating! There's a binaural audio playthrough of the first 20 minutes here if anyone's interested in checking it out.
Note: HRTF and binaural audio is extremely personal because it's dependent upon the physical shape of your ears. It will work better for some people than others because most HRTF is normalized across an average, and some people find themselves outside of it. If Sony can help get people better and more personal HRTF profiles across the board as Cerny mentions then that will be one of the biggest audio advancements in decades.
As far as bad... well, lots of low budget games are pretty bad since they're generally not mixed well. This is the case even with television and movies, and even some music. Audio, when it's not prioritized, quickly suffers. There's a lot of places out there to find bad audio, so I won't harp on it too much. I think the most shocking of major AAA games was the recent PC port of the Master Chief Collection but that's due to the result of a change in technology between the Xbox 360 and the PC. Volume of things are all over the place, some cutscenes still don't have their full audio gamut, and other sounds just sounded kind of tinny or weak. They're working on it at least, and have even hired a company just to fix the audio alone.
Beyond this, there's a whole community dedicated to trying to improve audio across games. There's a long, drawn out history between Creative, Aureal, the EAX technologies, and OpenAL that's a whole deep dive unto itself. But the short and more relevant end of it is that something called DSOAL now exists to try to take proprietary DirectSound technologies and put them into OpenAL to generally good results. This tech may be better known as the "True 3D Sound for Headphones" mods across all Bethesda games (Skyrim example) and it works great in those games. It changes Skyrim from having a Stereo mix to having a convincing 3D positional audio sound mix instead. It's super convincing! I can't play these games without these mods now.
For more about implementing 3D Audio, I generally refer to I Drink Lava's Airtable database as a starting point.