The only sound effect that stands out as bad to me is the pathetic, human-scale splash sound that occurs when your AC enters or jumps out of water.

great video! one thing to add is that it's a mech game, and mechs are very big and not to human scale. the people who complain about dull and muffled sounds (basically, sounds with little to no treble) don't understand that big things tend to produce low-pitched sounds. if the sounds were all high-pitched, it would sound pretty weird to me because that would make it sound like everything was happening at human scale.

So the walking, boosts, explosions are all in the background because they're supposed to be, they're unimportant. But more important sounds are higher pitched to get you to pay them attention and intake the information....interesting.

gameplay is king 😎

There should probably two audio profiles for games like armored core should exist the default and a cinematic which allows for that intense multiplayer focused action and then with the single player a more movie like experience given how it is kinda trying to do that

i can only imagine how challenging it is to sound master a game that goes full ADHD with heavy mechs and explosions and whatnot, there is not a single thing that silent :D i guess you have to go against your sound intuition to make room for sounds like the beeping noises and the "boss charging event" which you described in the video you called it" soundscape scaling" in one of your videos. the disrcepency between the most silent noise and the loudes thing is rather small in such a huge scale mecha universe. While for example in a game like "Escape from tarkov" you have a much broader soundscape scale, breathing

@LAxemann

8 ай бұрын

Seeing that you picked up a piece of definition I tried to establish and used it perfectly made my evening! :D Glad you enjoyed it! :)

Really interesting argument against peoples' criticisms! Got me thinking about a lot of things.. ..Mainly just that sacrifices are sacrifices at the end of the day; there's almost always gonna be a solution to a problem, and the sound design sacrifices mentioned just seem like giving up on finding that solution more so than something to be celebrated. The argument I’d make is that this definitely isn’t the first game to use spectral fore/backgrounding, yet it’s the only one in recent memory people have complained so much about, so there’s clearly a reason for that. Maybe a few too many of those sacrifices you mentioned were made. The other thing is that really, sacrifices shouldn’t need to be made in the first place. If you need a sound with less treble, design a sound that has less treble, rather than shelving off the treble of a sound that was clearly designed to function *with* treble. I guess a lot of the sound design just feels as though they worked backwards like that. None of this is to say I know the solution or could do any better, and I definitely agree that what the sound design *does* do it does successfully, but at the same time I think there's a reason so many people caught onto the sound design in this game particularly. Gut feeling is always worth some salt.

Awesome video essay! Adore this format of content. More audio examples mid video between the explanations would be nice, though!

@LAxemann

8 ай бұрын

Thanks a lot for the feedback! I'm in the process of figuring out a ratio between "talk" and examples that keeps a nice flow, so I really appreciate it. 🙏

I do agree with your larger point but I still think the sound design overall of Armored Core 6 could be improved without making any sacrifices. Mostly I think this because I've experienced it being done in a similar sort of game, Ace Combat. If you haven't played Ace Combat 7, I would definitely encourage you to. In both, you pilot fast machines against a lot of enemies where you have to juggle tracking of a lot of incoming fire while destroying enemy units and completing different objectives. One thing that separates the two is that Ace Combat has a lot more of an attention grabbing soundtrack and yet it doesn't suffer from it at all in a readability aspect. In fact, I would even say it has better readability than Armored Core given the more difficult circumstances. In Armored Core 6, I would often find myself put into bad situations trying to shoot a gun but my AC ends up inadvertently trying to pile bunker because the game doesn't tell you when you actually switch weapons with distinct audio. In Ace Combat, that doesn't happen because you have distinct ping noises for switching to your primary weapon and to your secondary. Something else that was also a little less clear was when to shoot. It's not as big of a deal but Ace Combat has different tones telling you when you're locked on. If they had something like that for missiles and ideal weapon ranges, it'd greatly improve the experience. Another complaint I saw lodged against Armored Core was that it doesn't tell you when missiles circle back around and hit from behind you. In Ace Combat, this is handled by a missile alert and minimap that shows incoming missiles. The last thing I think separates the two is how they convey speed, momentum, and the mass of their respective machines. While I do think Ace Combat does machines sounds better with the sounds of its engines and control surfaces changing with their speed and output, what separates their approaches here I will admit more comes down to the camera and UI. Ace Combat 7 greatly improved the camera work in the series so that when you get crosswind that pushes your plane sideways, it moves your plane's placement within your FOV. When you speed up, the plane pulls away from the camera and when you slow down, the plane pushes in towards the camera. It feels like Armored Core lacks this entirely by comparison. In addition in Armored Core, I sometimes felt like my machine got in the way of my own view of what was happening on-screen. Ace Combat I think also better places and prioritizes its UI elements. Speed and compass are both placed close to the center because of how important it is to know and manage your speed and to know the direction of objectives. It took me more than one playthrough to realize a compass existed in AC6. Generally I don't think rebalancing the audio would hinder Armored Core if it had the same attention to detail Ace Combat does because a lot of the sound systems in Ace Combat simply don't exist in Armored Core. Mecha as a genre is unique in the scale of what it depicts and if it doesn't even bother conveying that scale, then what's the point? I think what they should've done is emphasize the bass of the AC's movement audio feedback while implementing more informational system notifications at the higher end of the sound spectrum. That separation would improve the weighty feel of the mech while maintaining readability. Sorry about the long comment. This ended up being way longer than I thought it would. I've just been thinking about this a lot and when your video popped up in my feed, I just saw an opportunity. I appreciate it greatly if you did make it all the way through.

@LAxemann

8 ай бұрын

Heya! Those are great points. And knowing the Sound Design of Ace Combat 7 a bit, I think we end up on the same page. The point I made in the video was that Armored Core's Sound Design doesn't priorize grandiose weapon effects or traversal sounds, but rather focuses on trying to convey critical information to the player via UI/alerts. And Ace Combat 7 does the same - The sound design's center stage are not huge, crisp and up-front explosions or crackling jet engines, but rather the driving soundtrack (which is carefully mixed not to take up too much space) and UI sounds warning you about your surroundings. A good example are the missile warnings you brought up - Those are also not sounds of the missiles themselves, but UI/alarm elements. And I'm totally with you - Some dedicated warning for missiles approaching you from behind would be neat in AC6. Then again, the sound would probably never stop! :D

@Gigachimp

2 ай бұрын

The original Hawken from 2012 still takes the crown on best mech game sound design.

Awesome analysis and explanation.

This was discussed with care and such great points presented here! I understand why they had to rein in some frequencies. It could have been a bass and high frequency-clangy affair + the explosions competing for attention. The game also clearly wanted to be different from the 1st-person cockpit sound POV of other Mech franchises. I do wish there was an unlockable "masochistic sound option" within the game where we could listen to all that hard-hitting, metal-crushing, rumbly destruction---just for the experience of feeling the sound like in a Michael Bay Transformers movie on a multi-speaker home theater system. But that's just me 😅

Great video, Leon! Can't wait to dive deeper into soubd with you!

Nuh uh...

Great video Leon, can we mod it? 😅

@LAxemann

8 ай бұрын

Haha, I don't think I've ever seen sound modding for a FROM game :P And many thanks, good sir! 🙏

@TheHiFiTeam

8 ай бұрын

@@LAxemann I guess as you so gracefully describe here, everything is designed to function for the players tactical advantage not overblow movie sfx.

idk why people are complaining like just turn the volume up lmao just increase the SFX volume over the music and voices bro, just wear headphones bro