God of War Ragnarök: Behind The Epic Game Audio

It’s hard to believe the first God of War game was released in 2005. Back then, Kratos was hanging out with the Greek gods. He, and the game series, have come a long way — and not just story-wise. The audio teams have embraced each new technological advancement through the years, utilizing it to make the games sound the best they can. On this latest release, God of War Ragnarök, the sound team worked with the PS5’s DualSense haptics and Tempest 3D audio to create a sonic experience that’s never felt more immersive. Nick Tomassetti (Sound Design Lead for UI and Haptics on God of War Ragnarök) says, “The vision for haptics for this game was: if Kratos could feel it, you could too.”

And while the game has grown over the years, the sound team has honored what’s come before. Fans of the series spend some much time with Kratos, and now his son Atreus, that to completely redesign their iconic sounds (or the sounds of recurring enemies or creatures) would be a letdown, so each new release pays homage to the previous one. But even when sounds are carried across titles, there’s always a fresh element added. For instance, the giant tortoise Chaurli (that lives over Freya’s home) was introduced in 2018. His breathing and vocals didn’t change from the last game, but in God of War Ragnarök, he now has dialogue lines that needed to be designed.

In this interview, Michael Kent (Supervising Sound Designer/Mix Supervisor), Beau Jimenez (Sound Design Lead for AI Cast), Bryan Higa (Sound Design Lead for Player Characters: Kratos & Atreus), Alex Previty (Sound Design Lead for World: Ambience, Reverb, Technical Mixer), Stephen Schappler (Sound Design Lead for Interacts and Puzzles), Justin E. Bell (Sound Design Lead for Gameplay Moments and Set Pieces), and Nick Tomassetti (mentioned above) talk about their approach to honoring and improving upon the previous release (creatively and technically), capturing new sounds for this new game, building new soundscapes for the Nine Realms and beyond, improving combat on the sound-side, designing Kratos’s new spear, creating new sounds for Atreus, embracing the challenges and sonic opportunities for specific Boss fights, designing specific creatures sounds, improving immersion by incorporating 3D audio and DualSense haptics, mixing the epic Ragnarök battle, finding solutions to technical challenges, and so much more!

 

God of War Ragnarök – The Game Awards Accolades Trailer | PS5 & PS4 Games

 

Building on a strong sonic foundation

 

In a sequel, you have the opportunity to build on what’s come before, and also improve on things done in the first release. What were some sounds that you wanted to reuse from the first game, and what were some things you wanted to take a new approach to for this new release?

Michael Kent (MK): One of the biggest things we had to achieve was reusing and honoring as much from the first game as we could. So, there is a lot from the first game in God of War Ragnarök. We did, however, update, re-mix, and polish a lot of it to fit the aesthetic of the new game.

I think the biggest thing we set out to do on God of War Ragnarök was to get a dynamic, transparent, and clear mix that consistently supports the gameplay and the story. There is a lot happening on screen, and we needed to make sure that what was attacking you was clear, what wasn’t a threat was placed in the background, and whatever the player was doing felt satisfying, punchy, and powerful.

This included making sure our assets and sounds were as clean as possible and making sure things were sitting right frequency-wise in the mix. We had a lot of levers set up to achieve this, which I will answer in a different question.

Beau Jimenez (BJ): Speaking for the enemy sound design, GOWR included every enemy from 2018 and featured a gamut of new creature families and bosses. Our job was to ensure that the enemies from the previous game were mostly unchanged to honor 2018’s unique aesthetic, while scoping the massive workload ahead with the new enemies. The only touches we did were to the Draugr vocals in which we did some light remastering, added more tonal qualities, and tightened the ADSR (attack, decay, sustain, and release) for a more staccato audio experience while fighting them.

Stephen Schappler (SS): For the puzzles and various interacts in the game, we had many returning elements from God of War (2018). For most of them, we decided to redesign them from the ground up, specifically because in God of War Ragnarök there are a plethora of new realm-specific puzzle modules and we wanted to make sure we imbued each of the realm’s interacts with their own identities.

However, there are some iconic global interact sounds used throughout the game that we wanted to remain the same, like Kratos opening the various types of chests, the timed bell puzzles, and picking up health and rage stones. These sounds were really great in God of War (2018) and keeping them helps to build a strong sense of continuity between the two titles.

Bryan Higa (BH): Kratos’s weapons are some of gaming’s most iconic weapons, so we absolutely wanted to honor their legacy and player’s expectations of them, but we knew there would be many new weapons and instruments to use for combat in God of War Ragnarök. The challenge was identifying the core of what makes each weapon’s iconic sound and pushing them further stylistically so that no matter what Kratos used to fight, each weapon sang its signature style uniquely.

For the Leviathan Axe, we gave it a more serrated sharp edge to heighten the fantasy of an axe wielder, along with adding more crystal ice magic while also highlighting the original’s beautiful tonal elements. We kept the signature sound of catching the axe from the last game, just giving it a little more low end to help it pop more in our mix and also adding details of ice particle debris falling off of it.

For the Blades of Chaos, we built upon their fiery, whippy lightness and injected more sounds of the chains and different fire elements across combat and traversal. Since players would be catching the blades much more this time around, we set out to make sure catching them would feel just as satisfying as catching the Leviathan Axe.

For the Runic attacks that were returning in God of War Ragnarök, we kept the same principles in preserving the signature sounds for each one while adding more of the unique stylistic elements we were adding in this game to make sure each weapon sounded cohesive across combat.

Alex Previty (AP): The ambient soundscapes of God of War (2018) were very rich and grounded! However, it relied on the ambient beds having quite a bit of information, and as a result, there were fewer ambient emitters placed in the world.

With traditional channel-based output, this sounds just fine! However, since the PS5 version takes advantage of the Tempest 3D audio, there would be a lack of spatial detail with this approach. As a result, we strived to simplify the ambient beds, and instead place many more 3D ambient emitters in the world.

We definitely reused what we could in terms of sound assets, as the original sounds were extremely good and there was no point fixing what wasn’t broken! It also helped keep things consistent with the previous title.

As for reverb and delay, we completely overhauled and revisited everything! A brand new proprietary propagation and early reflection system was developed, which helped create a more immersive and dynamic experience.

Justin E. Bell (JB): In God of War Ragnarök, we had 370 of these things we called “Gameplay Moments,” or GPM for short. The best way to describe a GPM is to think of them as a mini in-game narrative moment involving one or more characters performing actions that are not systemic. An example of a systemic action would be Kratos running when you move the analog sticks. An example of a GPM could be something as small as Kratos handing a chew toy to Lúnda for her dog Helka, to something as big as Freya attacking Kratos and Atreus on the sled at the beginning of the game.

God of War Ragnarök’s predecessor had a comparatively small amount of GPMs, so it was bigger and more ambitious for the game itself and for the sound team in terms of scope.

Nick Tomassetti (NT): For UI, we wanted to preserve the feel of the original game but also expand upon those ideas. The “area discovered” sound is an iconic sound from the original that was largely left untouched besides a slight pitch adjustment to be in tune with the area music. Other improvements were to combat callouts, specifically with R3 stuns. Where there was nothing before, there’s now something to help reinforce the UI element. Adding stringers to the R3 Stuns and Kills heightened the cinematic presentation immensely and made performing these actions more addictive and satisfying for the player.
 

 
 
 
 
 

 

Recording sounds for the game

 

Can you talk about some of your recording sessions, and/or field recording trips you had for this game? What did you capture, how did you capture it, and how did you use it in the game? For instance, can you talk about the Gjallarhorn recordings?

MK: The recording for the Gjallarhorn was no small feat! The recording session was done during the height of the pandemic and overseas. We couldn’t travel so we had to get creative on how we recorded the sound.

…I reached out to a friend in Sweden and asked if he knew anyone who was well-versed in Viking horns. He introduced me to Göran Hallmarken.

Early on in development, I reached out to a friend in Sweden and asked if he knew anyone who was well-versed in Viking horns. He introduced me to Göran Hallmarken. Göran discussed horns and ideas for recording them. He introduced me to the Bronze Lur (Horn). This horn is from the Nordic bronze age 1750 – 500 BC, this is before the Viking age but the horn itself was one of the most interesting things I’ve seen and heard.

We couldn’t travel, so Göran worked with Nick Raynor, the team at Boom Libraries, and Eilif Gundersen, to set up a multi-location horn shoot with 6 different war horns. What we got back was 58 gigabytes of horn recordings in multiple locations; this was more than enough for the Gjallarhorn.

I ended up combining a lot of these horns and creating interesting overtones and levels to the horn with the base horn being the Bronze Lur. I then processed it further with a bit of distortion and wave folding to bring out and enhance the growl of the horn.

…it was tuned to the music of the scene and played out 12 decibels louder than everything…

After we had the sound, it was tuned to the music of the scene and played out 12 decibels louder than everything to achieve the grand size and scale that the horn of all horns needed. The fact that we got this recorded and done was a miracle given the state of the world and I am truly thankful to all involved in this recording!

AP: One thing I knew going into this project was that we could never have too many outdoor impulse responses! Most of God of War Ragnarök’s gameplay takes place in organic exterior spaces, so we needed a good variety of impulse responses (a sonic measurement of the sound in a space) to cover the large variety of environments in the game.

We needed to find a good location that was extremely quiet, and also not too far away from Los Angeles. After some research, we ended up settling on the Painted Canyon area of the Mecca Hills Wilderness, out here in California. We recorded in January so it didn’t get too hot, but it was still pretty toasty out, especially being in the sun all day!

…the most useful was the whip, as it had the necessary force to excite the distant surroundings.

We ended up using a few different sounds as impulses, but the most useful was the whip, as it had the necessary force to excite the distant surroundings. Luckily, Jeremy Rogers is not only an expert sound designer but also an expert whip-cracker, so that really came in handy during the trip!

This recording trip was also beneficial not just for the source we recorded, but it also taught me a lot about how different sounds behave in various spaces, which really assisted me in how I approached the reverb and delay in the game.

BH: Atreus and Freya’s Sonic Arrows were a combo of several different recording sessions, spanning across development. Covid precautions really forced us to be careful, creative, and economical about what and how we recorded. We used elements of whip cracking and sling-shotting bullet casings and paperclips out in the Painted Canyon in California.

The whip cracks were initially for capturing impulse responses of different areas in the canyon, but they provided a ton of inspiration for the sound of the Sonic Arrow’s implosive snap. It provided a huge source of expressive sounds for whippy and whistley arrow pass-bys that would help give them more character than normal arrow shots.

Another recording session that gave us an invaluable sound source was recording a bass transducer on different metal surfaces. Not only did we use it for Sonic Arrows, but they were also signature for all Bifrost magic and added a ton of low aggressive movement to different sounds across the game! We found a particular older metal cart at the studio that rang extra aggressively with the transducer that we nicknamed the “Horror Cart” since it gave such a creepy sound.

The team made another trip to the Bakersfield Desert to capture source of metal hits, whooshes, and rings. One metal bar gave a really wispy unique whoosh that we used to give Sonic Arrows a more ethereal element.

Finally, since so many of us were working from home alone or secluded in rooms, a lot of us recorded sounds by ourselves. I needed hollow, airy tones for the Sonic arrows, so I learned how to play the ocarina and recorded myself playing. This helped give Sonic Abilities a tonal element that players could pick out during combat, which was incredibly helpful to have in chaotic battles.

SS: For the interacts and puzzles, we captured a lot of unique material. Earlier on in the project, I was working and living in Chicago, and I did many sessions recording banging, scraping, slamming, and jostling objects large and small in my backyard and garage. For instance, the main sound of Kratos pushing the wheel cranks is me dragging my daughter’s water table across a concrete floor. The house I was living in was built in 1901 and provided some great old creaky door opens and slams.

…the main sound of Kratos pushing the wheel cranks is me dragging my daughter’s water table across a concrete floor.

In San Diego, we did an extensive junkyard recording session which gave us some excellent metal impacts and detailed debris that we sprinkled throughout the Nine Realms.

At the junkyard, we put many random objects on the “junk cart” and pushed them around to get some detailed movement and jostling sounds that we used for things like elevator movement.

 

Foley sounds and sessions

 

We were also able to leverage the Foley stage we have at our San Diego facility where Joanna Fang (Senior Foley Artist) and Blake Collins (Senior Foley Mixer) recorded even more props and objects for us to use for elevators, gear-driven objects, large gates, doors, etc.

I paired up with Joanna and Blake to record a custom gore library for use in the project.

I paired up with Joanna and Blake to record a custom gore library for use in the project. We pillaged our local supermarkets and recorded almost everything we could, including pomelos, spaghetti squash, lasagna, walnuts, and all the rest. It was a really fun session.

BJ: One of my personal favorite recording ventures was acquiring source sounds for the game’s new vehicle, the Wolf Sled, from our Formosa Interactive Foley partners Dawn Fintor, Alicia Stevenson and Jeff Gross. It was a collaborative effort in that we came to them with a general idea of what we needed: sled runners grinding and sliding on snow, sand, rock, and ice. But the session was also a playground for ideas and happy accidents. For instance, we started thinking, “What would it sound like if you performed with the microphone placed inside a large resonant, wooden box?”

The idea being maybe the low, muffled content could work for exemplifying the weight of the bed. We wanted to capture unique perspectives to use in choice layers to the overall sound. That resonant low-end paired beautifully with wood groans and creaks, which gave the sled’s body a lovely personality and expressiveness.

JB: While many GPMs are relatively brief and small in nature, we felt that adding bespoke sounds to them would further enhance worldbuilding and narrative beats. Since many GPMs involved characters interacting with the world and each other in unique ways, we knew Foley would play a big role.

Efficiency was key as we had a compressed timeframe to get this content into the game.

Efficiency was key as we had a compressed timeframe to get this content into the game. Initially we thought we could kit-bash Foley we had recorded for other things, but soon realized that doing so would take more time than just recording them. Besides, it wouldn’t have provided the nuanced performances we were looking for, so we made the decision to record custom Foley for the majority of GPMs! Additionally, we also recorded a loop group for GPMs that needed walla.

The process involved spotting and, with help from our amazing QA team, capturing each GPM in game, and then organizing those notes and captures into a giant Pro Tools session to hand off to the Foley stage. Organization and context was key for them to work efficiently, so extra care was given to keeping game captures organized by character, realm, and context.

---

Popular on A Sound Effect right now - article continues below:

---

I also documented relevant information in a huge Excel tracking spreadsheet that the entire team used to keep ourselves organized.

I also documented relevant information in a huge Excel tracking spreadsheet that the entire team used to keep ourselves organized. It included details like assignee, GPM status, if it needed haptics, Foley, sound design, and if the camera and analog stick was locked so that we could know at a glance if the stem should be mono or 5.1. I called it Pathmaker, and, to call it just a tracking spreadsheet doesn’t really do it justice because it did way more than track GPM status.

We used extensive VBA scripting; it also had advanced functionality such as launching the selected GPM on the devkit, creating a Reaper or Pro Tools session for the GPM using the user’s template and storing/organizing it on our team’s file server, the ability to open previously made sessions, spotting the capture video to the session automatically, opening the latest video capture on our intranet, and opening the Jira ticket among many other things. This was all accessible via convenient shortcut commands directly from within the spreadsheet. This enabled our team to move quickly and efficiently so that they could focus on what mattered most, making GPMs sound great.

Overall it was a huge and detailed task that involved a large number of extremely talented people from PlayStation Studios Sound/Foley/Dialog/Music/Production, the team at Santa Monica Studio, the Foley team at Molinaire who provided editorial and additional Foley work, and the ADR group at Sony Pictures Studio.

 

Sounds of the realms:

 

What are some key sounds that help the ambiences for these Realms to sound distinct: Midgard, Alfheim, Helheim, Jotunheim, Muspelheim, Niflheim, Vanaheim, Svartalfheim, and Asgard, and also The Spark of the World, inside the Giant’s Shrine, The Crater, Pilgrim’s Landing, and The Forbidden Sands?

AP: Unlike the previous game, you can visit all of the Nine Realms in God of War Ragnarök! So in order to make each realm feel truly unique, we had to go above and beyond with the ambient soundscapes in order to match the wildly unique environments you can encounter. Most of the awesome ambience work you hear in the game was done by the sound team in Japan (Noburo Masuda, Tsubasa Ito, Satsuki Sato, Derrick Espino and Kouji Niikura), as well as Dan Ramos, who is located in San Diego. Charles Dworetz also assisted a lot with some amazing technical and implementation work for us. That being said, I will do my best to speak to the high level direction for each realm even if I didn’t personally create or implement the assets!

 

Combat sound systems and weapons:

 

Players are showing lots of love for God of War Ragnarök‘s improved combat. What were some things you did on the sound side (creative and technically) that contributed to enhancing the experience?

MK: We wanted to have a clear, dynamic, and transparent mix for this game. It was important for us to make sure the player could hear what they needed to hear at any given time. We had a few systems at play to help with this. We used Wwise HDR mainly for clearing out Transient information. It was important for us to make sure the player couldn’t hear the ducking going on so we used HDR to create ‘ducking spikes’ in combat to make things feel big and impactful without noticing the ducking, so the fade in and out times had to be quick. We used pink noise as an ambience to tune the HDR so it was as transparent as possible.

We used Wwise HDR mainly for clearing out Transient information.

The only things we had in the HDR system were combat sounds and big level events. Music and dialogue were excluded as we wanted them to serve as the backbone of the mix and we needed those two elements as close to spec as possible. We developed and used a threat system where the things that were directly attacking you were in focus and the things that were not were deprioritized and turned down.

We also assigned creatures with an attack priority where we could adjust the mix depending on who was being targeted – the player being the highest attack priority and the companions being a lower priority. This, in combination of dynamic EQ and compression and state-based mixing, cleaned up the mix considerably and allowed us to push and pull dynamics to create a transparent and punchy mix that allowed the player to get the information they needed in the cleanest way possible.

BH: The combat design team built upon and improved the systems from the last game in every way and provided guidance and inspiration for sound at every step! One of the greatest additions was the four new shields Kratos can wield. Because each shield has unique characteristics designed for different styles of fighting, we wanted to make sure that the sounds reinforced the different fantasies for players using them. Eric Williams, the game’s director, gave perfect advice as a starting point: Make them so identifiable that they could be used as onomatopoeias if translated into comics, using examples like ‘THWIP’ and ‘SNIKT.’ This simple and clean idea became the pillar going forward for the shields.

We assigned descriptive titles for each shield that helped describe the feeling and size each should sound like…

We assigned descriptive titles for each shield that helped describe the feeling and size each should sound like; Dauntless Shield: Switchblade, Stone Wall Shield: Thick Door, Onslaught Shield: Solid Hammer, Shatter Star Shield: Rusted Cannon. To make sure we could achieve this, we worked with the excellent Foley team at Formosa, Dawn Fintor, Alicia Stevenson, and Jeff Gross, in recording unique metal source for each shield. From there it took a lot of creation building blocks, design time and iteration based on feedback from different teams and leadership to make them sound HUGE.

---

Sound highlight - article continues below:

---

They were also technically challenging since some sounds would be shared across shields while others would not, while all shields needed to be equipable through the menu.

Activating the buff would ‘turn on’ additional sounds to play for each weapon during combat combos…

Also, one of the core goals of our team was to allow players to express themselves within combat, and the momentum system is one of the new additions that helped achieve that. As the player attacks enemies without getting hit, Kratos’ weapon damage builds up. Once it reaches a threshold, players can choose to either keep the current state or cash-in and activate a special ‘high momentum’ state that buffs all damage and speed for a certain amount of time. Working with combat designers and the audio tech team, we were able to connect RTPCs (Real-time Parameter Controls) in Wwise to control switch groups and states so that sound reinforced the story of gaining high-octane godhood in combat for a short period. Activating the buff would ‘turn on’ additional sounds to play for each weapon during combat combos to make the player feel more powerful and expressive. We wanted to make sure that players could tell the difference of having it on or off so that they could work up to that ‘reward’ of activating it during combat multiple times throughout the game.

During cooldowns on runic attacks, we also added new functionalities for the Triangle Button for each weapon, giving players more options for charged up weapon abilities. The Axe charges up frost, which gives us a great moment to highlight the charge-up and punchiness on the activate through sound.

… there’s a charge-up sound playing as the player holds the triangle button…

The blades triangle was also a lot of fun to sound design as it involved spinning the blades and igniting them. During the ignition spinning, there’s a combination of fire loops and one-shot fire whooshes to highlight the aggressive doppler of the spinning. The spear’s triangle was expertly sound designed by Mike so that there’s a charge-up sound playing as the player holds the triangle button, but at any moment they can let go and slam the spear on the ground. If the player holds the Triangle button for the max limit, the spear ground slam sound is much bigger and definitely one of my favorite and most satisfying sounds in the game.
 

Kratos has a new weapon. What was the process in finding its sonic signature and differentiating it from the other weapons?

MK: For the Draupnir spear, we needed it to be sonically different from the Leviathan Axe and Blades of Chaos. Given that its element is wind powered, we played into that as much as possible.

Early on, we set up recording sessions to record a lot of different types of metal and whooshes.

Early on, we set up recording sessions to record a lot of different types of metal and whooshes. We had to get creative as Covid was at its height and we couldn’t be in the studio together.

We drove out to the middle of nowhere outside Bakersfield and recorded as much source as we could. We hit metal poles with rebar and tried to capture what we could in the field.

After getting everything back in the studio, I began concepting the spear. I figured out a way to bring out and isolate and enhance the tonal elements of the metal hits and this was the basis of the sound for the spear. This metal combined with processed wind, and bottle rockets, are the base of the sound design.

This metal combined with processed wind, and bottle rockets, are the base of the sound design.

The overall direction for the spear was to make it punchy and snappy. This weapon was a weapon that Kratos used to first learn how to fight. It had to sound like he was comfortable and skilled with it.

Each move of the spear, the light and heavy combo were designed to tell a story throughout the life of the combo. For the light combo, each move – one, two, three, four, five – have different sonic characteristics to them. This can branch to the heavier combo types, which again, were designed to tell a story. Isolating each move was important as I wanted it to ‘sing and talk’ as you made the way through the combos.

For the light combo, each move…have different sonic characteristics to them.

When swinging the spear outside of combat, we have nice finisher details like wind, debris tails, and tonal resonance ring outs after specific moves in a combo. If you hit an enemy, these are stopped by the visceral impacts that were designed specifically for the spear. We had impacts for the sharp stabs, blunt side of the spear, and slicing.

One of the best parts of the spear is the explosion tech. We wanted to give the player the feel of a slot machine when exploding spears. We did this by having different explosion content for the start, middle, and end explosions. If the player detonates one spear it plays the end explosion, two spears it will play the start then end explosion. Three or more spears would play the start, middle, then end explosion. This helped create a unique cadence to the explosions generated by detonating the spears.

When swinging the spear outside of combat, we have nice finisher details like wind, debris tails, and tonal resonance ring outs…

There was also different content for if you detonated the spear embedded in the ground or the enemy, so you could differentiate what they were exploding on as well. We changed our content based on distance.

The detonated ‘ping’ or spear ground slam is one sound. It took a long time to get the initial transient to be something you could listen to repeatedly. We then added tonal tails to this that changed depending on how hard you hit the spear on the ground. The tails would stop depending on how close or far the spear explosion was. This helps create a dynamically-changing, ever-evolving situation when the player uses the spear.

We made signature 5.1 content for big moments to reinforce that Pavlovian response for executing exciting abilities…

BH: Mike created a ton of source from all of his explorations and designs for the spear that Lewis Everest and I used and built upon to round out the rest of the Draupnir Spear’s combat including all the spear runic attacks, skill tree unlockable abilities, and momentum system content. We made signature 5.1 content for big moments to reinforce that Pavlovian response for executing exciting abilities and also peppered in lots of details of hand pats and hand slides that you can hear in combat and during traversal to help give the player’s interactions a more tactile feel. We made sure to stick to the sound palette we created for the spear to maintain its sonic signature compared to the Leviathan Axe and Blades of Chaos.
 

 

 

The sound of Atreus:

 

Atreus is a new playable character for the series! What was the development process on creating his sound compared to Kratos?

BH: Not only is Atreus a playable character in this game, he essentially mirrors the features of his father’s combat and traversal to a smaller degree: he has his own ability skill trees, L3R3 transformations, melee and projectile combos, shield, runic summons and more!

The ongoing sound challenge for Atreus was that while he is much more nimble and acrobatic than Kratos, he still needed to feel powerful and godlike in his own way.

The ongoing sound challenge for Atreus was that while he is much more nimble and acrobatic than Kratos, he still needed to feel powerful and godlike in his own way. We also wanted to mirror the juxtaposition of Kratos’ practical brutish strength, versus Atreus’s empathic sense of wonder.

The first and most notable difference is Atreus’s weapons and combat. Atreus still uses his bow and arrows from the previous game, but they’ve been upgraded a bit and grown more mature with him. We recorded lots of new Foley and source of bow and wood creaks along with rope and leather creaking for the bow string. There are two constant string tension loops that play when aiming that we control through RTPCs to change volume and pitch as the player aims along the x and y axis.

There are two constant string tension loops that play when aiming that we control through RTPCs to change volume and pitch as the player aims along the x and y axis.

The bow shots were one of the most iterated on during production, from early concepts all the way up to the last week we were in the build. The first few iterations felt too realistic and didn’t have a punch typically associated with bowshots. Instead, we wanted his bowshot to feel more like a gun, with more bass and transient at the beginning. Along with the bowshot, we crafted the arrow flybys to feel more aggressive compared to the last game to help convey that Atreus was older and stronger than before. It was extremely fun to discover what felt best – where we ended was definitely not where we started.

Atreus’s shield was one of the most satisfying to design as there was very little precedent to what defensive Jotunheim magic sounds like. We pulled source from metal and crystal singing bowls, glassy sand debris, sparkles and sizzles, and some processed synthetic warbles to give it an otherworldly feel. Overall, our goal was for Atreus to feel a little more mystical, tonal, and youthful compared to Kratos while still keeping his father’s aggressiveness and power.

Working with our audio tech team, we created a breathing system that would react to Atreus-wolf’s surroundings.

Atreus can also transform into a wolf when he builds up enough rage. Luckily, we have great library source of wolf vocalizations, but we also got new recordings from our friends at Boom Library that were essential to Atreus-wolf’s unique voice. Working with our audio tech team, we created a breathing system that would react to Atreus-wolf’s surroundings. If he is around enemies, his breathing will be much more aggressive with growls and barks, while if there are no enemies around, his breathing will be much more relaxed and calm.

One of the key differences between Atreus and Kratos is Atreus’s affinity with creatures and wildlife. In fact, he can call upon Runic Summons which are ethereal creatures that help the player in battles. Working together with Sound Designer Danny Hey, we were able to pull from the source library of Jotunheim magic and build upon that, giving these creatures a more playful mystical soundscape while also retaining the recognizable animal vocals so that players could easily identify them in combat.
 

 

Combat sequence highlights:

 

What were some sonic challenges or opportunities (creative and technical) for the combat sequences below:

 

Creature sound highlights:

 

Let’s talk about the creatures! What went into the sounds for:

 

Favorite creatures to design:

 

What were your favorite creatures to design? Why? What went into them?

MK: For me it was working on Thor. There were a lot of collaborators on it. Mike Leaning, David Farmer (Sweet Justice) and Joanna Fang and Blake Collins (PlayStation) on the Foley side of things.

…we put a lot of detail into his sound and as the moves get bigger so does the sound design.

From the tonal whooshes of Mjolnir to his bigger thunderous attacks, we put a lot of detail into his sound and as the moves get bigger so does the sound design. I tried to space out the audio starts, middles, and end of a move or ability. I would go until it felt off then tighten the spacing; this made everything feel massive and larger than life.

When Thor does some of his bigger attacks, there will always be a quad thunder roll after the move has finished. Getting the cinematic transitions to work seamlessly with combat was fun and challenging. The most fun cinematic transition to work on was when Thor kills Kratos and revives him. A lot of the electricity used on Thor was a plasma ball recorded with a popular transducer microphone running through a modular rig. This was combined with cellophane and processed duct tape to get the sound you hear in-game for the electricity on his hammer. Thor’s Foley and movement was recorded in house by our Foley team. To get the Foley to sound weighty, I ran it through a harmonic shift plugin which added some meaty low end, and then some saturation for bite.

BJ: Angrboda’s yak, Jalla, was a gratifying creature to realize with the team. Her character design is endearing: she has long, shaggy fur with cookware, bottles and other miscellaneous objects hanging from her saddle with flowers all throughout her mane. Going off of her looks, we thought she should sound not only heavy and larger-than-life, but also amiable and good-natured.

You can hear all sorts of chimes and trinkets as she moves, as well as the saddle objects rattling around based on velocity. These elements paired with her low, resonant footsteps gave her a pleasant musical rhythm.

 

 

3D Audio opportunities:

 

How were you able to take advantage of 3D audio and DualSense haptic feedback on the PS5 for God of War Ragnarök?

MK: One of the cooler things we did with 3D audio is every time Thor finishes a big move, there is a quad thunder layer that plays in the height channel. If you are playing on headphones, it will sound above you!

BJ: One simple thing you can do to leverage the proprietary 3D audio is adding sound to various emitters of a set-piece or feature. The more gargantuan the thing, the more in-game spatialization you’ll get! For Garm, we made sure to play sounds on each paw, his mouth, and his animating chain to get the ultimate spread in the 3D environment!

Wwise version 2021 was a godsend for this project; the new 3D audio workflow made working a breeze!

AP: Like Beau said, we really had to get detailed on how many emitters we were utilizing in-game! We would often split sounds up into various parts and play them on different emitters to get a better sense of spatialization in the word. We also took proper care into having certain sounds NOT be spatialized so we could still take advantage of that larger-than-life cinematic sound that makes God of War so great. Wwise version 2021 was a godsend for this project; the new 3D audio workflow made working a breeze!

NT: The vision for haptics for this game was: if Kratos could feel it, you could too. We wanted you to feel the weight of pulling in the blades and the axe as well as the small touches of picking up an item or Mimir.

…when Kratos is picking up an object with his right hand you feel it on the right side of the controller.

The level of detail the DualSense is capable of producing allows us to do things such as have the haptic feedback match the hand Kratos might be touching something with. For example, in a cutscene when Kratos is picking up an object with his right hand you feel it on the right side of the controller. Unlike rumble, haptics are capable of creating the tiniest of little feelings such as when Ratatoskr climbs all over Kratos you can feel each tiny little footstep.

 

 

Mixing the game:

 

What was your approach to mixing Ragnarök? The battle sequences were insane; how did you help to clarify those in the mix while still making them feel epic and intense?

MK: The Ragnarök gameplay was a challenge to mix! We did multiple playthroughs to figure out what the best approach was and ended up using the music to dynamically turn down combat and other sounds. This was subtle but made everything feel more epic. We needed the moments when you were fighting in the trenches to be all about the combat so we mixed out a lot of the war ambience in those moments where we could in favor of the fighting.

(We) ended up using the music to dynamically turn down combat and other sounds.

When outside of the trenches we played up the ambience of the chaotic nature of the battle, then used azimuth and other techniques to focus the players attention on the big events that were happening in the battle. The cinematic moments in the middle of the gameplay where our quiet moment ‘anchors.’ This is where the player could take a breath from the chaos before it started again. All in all, it was a massive effort on all fronts to get it to sound as good as it did!

AP: The main goal during the battle of Ragnarök is to push ahead and get to the wall as quickly as possible, so the skirmishes you get into aren’t really as important, relatively speaking — they’re more like speed bumps on the way to your destination!

…we slightly deprioritized combat sounds in the mix to give precedence to the score and to the epic one-off moments that happen.

So we decided that the feeling of the battle was more important than the specifics of the battle itself. Fighting hordes of enemies for this long would be fatiguing on the ears and also take away from the more important scripted moments that occur, so we slightly deprioritized combat sounds in the mix to give precedence to the score and to the epic one-off moments that happen.

We did, however, make sure to leave finishing moves and impacts untouched, just to make sure proper gameplay feedback wasn’t completely being stomped on. We also gave all of the VO here special treatment so the narrative dialogue was always audible amidst the chaos.

JB: The entire Ragnarök sequence is basically a giant thrill ride and designed to represent the chaos of war. At any given moment you could have 3 or 4 epic events with massive sounds happening on screen at once! It was a real challenge initially to understand how it all fit together.

…an important part of maintaining that dense clarity was to methodically work through each story beat one by one…

As you alluded to, creating clarity with so much going on was no small task. We probably spent 3 days total mixing just the trench sequence? That’s not counting the boss battles at the end. Alex can go into specifics better than I can, but an important part of maintaining that dense clarity was to methodically work through each story beat one by one in order to get them to sit in the mix correctly.

This involved multiple playthroughs of the same section of gameplay, over and over, scrutinizing every little detail, until each moment smoothly flowed into the next in a way that kept the excitement level high. Fortunately, there are enough ‘quiet’ moments built into the gameplay that consist primarily of the player traversing the environment, which helped to provide moments of relative calm, space, and contrast needed to help those big moments have impact.

Fortunately, there are enough ‘quiet’ moments…to help those big moments have impact.

The amount of unique audio content in this part of the game alone was huge, consisting of around 68 GPMs, eight cutscenes, multiple combat encounters, five mini-boss battles, two player character changes, five companions, and two multiphase boss battles. It was a massive effort and involved the coordinated efforts of every single audio sub-discipline!
 

 

Technical challenges and solving them:

 

What were your biggest technical challenges in terms of sound on God Of War Ragnarök? What were the solutions to overcoming them?

MK: We had to get creative with how we made things sound unique. One trick we did for all player sounds was have a dynamically shifting notch filter on the attack sounds for both Atreus and Kratos. This helped us break up the frequency repetition from having less variations. Every time the player does an attack a new EQ change is applied, changing the sound of the attack.

Every time the player does an attack a new EQ change is applied, changing the sound of the attack.

BH: We were working with memory constraints and God of War Ragnarök required much more new content to fit, including four new shields, a completely new weapon and all its combos, new abilities, two new rage mode states, all new gear Foley, and more. Along with deciding where to have less variations, we discovered that we could save a large amount of memory if we did a mixdown of any legacy content that originally would play several different layers, or voices, within Wwise per Wwise event triggers.

.. our speedy workflow with our Reaper to Wwise setup…allowed us to quickly mix and design within Reaper and then test in Wwise and in a build…

So instead of Kratos’s blades playing 4-8 voices for a single attack, we consolidated them down to one file. Because of our speedy workflow with our Reaper to Wwise setup, it allowed us to quickly mix and design within Reaper and then test in Wwise and in a build, so mixing layers within Wwise was not a necessity. This process freed up all the space we needed for all the new content at high fidelity while still keeping any legacy sounds at the same quality from before.

BJ: Memory management is a challenge on any game in terms of audio. We utilized temp memory for blocking our projected memory needs, thoughtful conversion settings where we needed to reduce memory costs, and rigorous memory management sweeps where variations were reduced, tails were shortened, and content was reused.

For me, that’s the fun of game audio: you can flex your creative chops then switch your brain to a more technical problem that needs a solution. That dynamic keeps the work interesting!

AP: Developing a brand new propagation and early reflection system was probably one of the trickiest things I’ve seen during a game’s production! I was lucky enough to work with Stepan Boev (Senior Audio Programmer at Santa Monica Studio), who developed a robust and great sounding audio propagation system from the ground up. It was undergoing improvements all the way up until the end of production, so it was a challenge working back and forth to make sure everything sounded tip-top!

The early reflection system was developed with the help of John McCoy and …was…made specifically for ‘God of War Ragnarök.’

The early reflection system was developed with the help of John McCoy from Bluepoint Games, and it was also something made specifically for God of War Ragnarök. This was something that was working in parallel with the aforementioned propagation system, so there was a constant cycle of work done to make sure everything was working together harmoniously.

This also would have not been possible without Charles Dworetz, who put in a lot of input and hard work to make sure everything was working correctly!

 

 

A lasting impact:

 

How has working on God Of War Ragnarök helped you to grow as a game audio professional? How has working on this game helped you to ‘level up’?

MK: This was one of the most challenging and rewarding games I have worked on. The quality bar is so high and each team was bringing their A-game so we had to deliver the best experience we could to support the epic game that it is. I have become a better leader and sound designer because of it!

BJ: To get this game out the door, it took a village! I feel like I leveled up my interpersonal skills managing various teams and features. While doing so, I’ve learned a lot from everyone around me. It was an all-star team that came together from all backgrounds to create something memorable! I’ll always look back on this project fondly with gratitude and pride. A highlight of my career!

JB: Honestly it was working with the team. We had a massive, incredibly talented, and supportive audio team — it was the largest team I had ever worked with in my career by a longshot! Getting to work with and learn from each of them was a daily masterclass in generosity and audio/game development awesomeness.

AP: This was definitely the biggest and most challenging game I have ever worked on! No challenge ever felt too great, and that was due to the awesome collaboration and support from the teams at PlayStation Studios, Santa Monica Studio, and beyond. I learned a lot about storytelling and mixing, and my experiences from this project taught me a lot about how to creatively and technically approach projects in the future!

SS: This project was my first Sony title, and it was illuminating to see the artistry, skill, and dedication put into it by everyone at PlayStation, Santa Monica Studio, and our partners. I learned so much throughout this project from everyone involved. It was a great experience and I am proud of the audio we were able to produce for this massive title.

BH: Shepherding the sound for Kratos and Atreus was creatively and technically the most challenging task I’ve done in that it intersected with almost all disciplines, and managing the people, schedule, and quality bar for it all helped level me up far beyond where I thought I could go. I got to practice making things sound MASSIVE while still retaining the delicacy of quiet detailed moments. My skills were forged and refined only through my brilliant co-workers and creative partners who went with me on this journey through the nine realms and I owe them everything.

 

A big thanks to Michael Kent, Beau Jimenez, Bryan Higa, Alex Previty, Stephen Schappler, Justin E. Bell, and Nick Tomassetti for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the sound of God Of War Ragnarök and to Jennifer Walden for the interview!

 

Please share this:

 

---

 
   

• Sonic challenges