Interviews
Audio Director Heather Sowards Talks About the Sound Design of EverQuest II
“… The scope of the audio in general on this game is such a huge undertaking”
EverQuest II has captured the attention of a lot of people who play or are considering playing a massively multiplayer online title.
The game itself is being billed as providing the next-generation experience in the genre. To support that statement, the designers have gone to great lengths to make the game a graphical delight and build it so that not only the hardcore gamers but casual players as well will find immersion, challenge and entertainment in the realm of Norrath as EQ2 reveals it.
One of the elements that do not get a lot of attention when it comes to the MMO genre is the soundtrack of the game. This is not because the designers have considered it unimportant – quite the contrary. Turn up the volume on your favorite MMP and you will likely hear a world vibrating with the sounds of life. The environments have the ambient sounds you would expect and the world is brought to life with the richly textured sounds that one knows instinctively would or should be there.
But even in this regard, EQ2 promises to go where no current MMO has gone.
So what does this all mean? To answer that question, and many others, Heather Sowards, the audio director of EverQuest II, took a few moments to talk with GameZone about that portion of what could well be one of the biggest MMOs to hit the market.
Question: EverQuest II purports to have the largest audio tracks of any game in the MMO genre. How many hours of recorded audio are we talking about and how many voice actors were involved in creating this?
Heather: The voice-over is a huge amount of the audio content in EverQuest II. So far we have already recorded over 200 actors. We have been recording non-stop for the last 3 months and have accumulated hundreds of hours of voice recording.
Q: Why did you think it was necessary to take the audio to this level? Was it to show what could be done, or for immersion sake, or simply because it was something you felt was missing in the genre?
Heather: I think all of the reasons you mentioned up above came into play when we decided to make audio a key feature in EverQuest II. We felt like the rest of the game had such a grand cinematic feel to it, that there was no reason the audio shouldn't be at that level as well. We really want to make the player "believe" the world he is adventuring in when he plays EQII and we understand how audio can have a huge impact in achieving that goal.
Q: And in a related note, EQ2 is out to reset the bar for all MMOs. How does the soundtrack contribute to that? Will players need certain minimum audio system requirements to experience the full sound this game offers?
Heather: I recommend a 5.1 or 7.1 setup with a soundcard that supports EAX 3 and above. The game will sound fine on a lesser sound card, but you will really notice a quality difference on a nicer card.
Q: Did you have an overall concept in mind when piecing together the sound for the areas, as in trying to create a certain feel for the individual zones within the world?
Heather: We definitely wanted to give each zone its own personality. For example, Qeynos is going to sound more friendly even in its undead areas than anything in Freeport. Freeport ambience will largely be more bleak.
Q: How did you create the ambient or environmental sounds?
Heather: A lot of our ambient sounds were either taken from recordings that our sound team did on outdoor excursions or created in the studio. We try to stay away from library sounds as much as possible.
Q: How expansive is the musical score of this game? Who is the musical director and does the game feature orchestral music?
Heather: We have over 90 minutes of new original music for EQ II. Our soundtrack was composed and directed by award-winning soundtrack composer, Laura Karpman. The game does feature orchestral music recorded with a full orchestra in Eastern Europe.
Q: Sound often plays a supporting role to the video portion of a game. If it is good, it is rarely noticed. If it is bad, it can be a real irritant. What differentiates how much is enough and how much is going overboard, in your opinion, when it comes to sound? How did you strike a balance with EQ2?
Heather: This is a great question :) I think a lot of times the mistake is made that "everything" in the game that should make sound has a sound and that isn't always the case with good sound in movies and games. You need to pick the elements in the game that are going to create the illusion you want to build for the player and what sounds are important to alert the player to key game play information. If we've done our job right, the audio shouldn't be irritating or overly noticeable. :) It should just be an integral part of the experience. No one likes a guitarist that solos all the time and it’s the same with audio elements in a game. We can't try and be the center of attention all the time, we need to help create the entire experience along with art, design and gameplay.
Q: When you consider the scope of the soundtrack of EQ2, what aspects are you the most impressed and proud about?
Heather: For this question I will use the word soundtrack to encompass all audio on EQ2. I would say that the scope of the audio in general on this game is such a huge undertaking, that we will be very proud of it once we have finished and delivered it. We don't have a whole lot of time to be impressed or proud yet... (laugh) We have a lot of work to do.
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