Haze/IGN Blogs/The Sound of Haze

You might not have heard of Graeme Norgate, but if you’re a true gamer then you’ve definitely heard his work. From GoldenEye and Perfect Dark, to TimeSplitters and Second Sight, ‘Beefburger’ Norgate has been capturing ears for longer than he might care to remember. Now, thanks to his dedication to Free Radical and, of course, the fact that he is too lazy to get a real job, he’s turning his audio expertise to HAZE.

As we speak, he’s cramming the last few audio files into the game. Of course, when you’ve been in the industry as long as Beefburger, you can enjoy the luxury of a small army of dogsbodies to play through the game to check that your vision has been realized. They also feed him grapes on a chaise-longue.

Beefburger’s audio ‘vision’, if you will, has always been about making the experience of playing as a Mantel trooper as different as possible from that of a Promise Hand rebel. As a Mantel guy, the soundscape is very much a classic videogame experience: the music is gung-ho, the character deaths are a little over the top.

However, once you become a rebel, the sounds become more realistic, and more visceral. As a rebel, the score plays more on the emotional themes rather than just being pure action, and the deaths are drawn out and uncomfortable to listen to.

Of course, with a game like Haze, the gun effects are pretty damn important. Beefburger takes a source sound of a gunshot, then he adds in about half a dozen extra sounds to steer it towards what he needs. He’ll add, say, metallic sounds to add a chunkier machinery feel; he’ll add motor sounds, or some very short transient distortion sounds to give it more kick. He even mixed in bee sounds for the Mantel rifle, to help make a distinction between it and the rebel equivalent.

Now, in Beefburger’s opinion, speech is even more important than sound effects. So, once we’ve cast and recorded the best possible actors, he and I will pick the best takes. Sometimes it’s a case of chopping up several takes and gluing pieces together to get the desired effect. He’ll then do various amounts of processing to make it clearer. Speech can be boring to cut up, but it’s absolutely vital in setting the scene and letting you guys know what the hell is going on.

Interestingly, Beefburger has also altered the voices and sounds depending on how much nectar you have in your blood at any time. Because we can’t necessarily predict when you’ll be using Nectar, it means that these audio effects are done on-the-fly by the effects processing on the PS3. It’s not something we’ve done to the sound, it’s something that the console can do to the sound whenever it’s necessary – which is a first for us. The previous gen simply didn’t have the power to do this.

Of course, we’ve got tons of music – a different track depending on how much nectar you’re taking. The idea being that the more you take, the more exciting the music gets. We want the experience of Nectar to be so much fun that you, instead of the character, get addicted to using it. On top of all that, we’ve got bespoke orchestral music for the in-game action and the narrative scenes too. The score was heavily influenced by the rousing works of Harry Gregson-Williams and James Newton-Howard. And, oh, let’s say Huey Lewis and The News.

Haze Menu Music

For your listening pleasure, we’ve created a special audio file: a little piece of back story that won’t be appearing in the game. You can hear it here, exclusively first on IGN.

Teaser Track