Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 award winning game audio Asbjoern Andersen


Ninja Theory's Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II (published by Xbox Game Studios) – available now on Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, Steam and Cloud – is the follow-up to Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice (2017). For this sequel, the game's creators have shifted the focus from portraying Senua's internal battle with insanity to examining how she interacts with the outside world, and how her psychosis shapes her unique worldview. In terms of sound, this meant expressing how Senua feels in each situation. To immerse the player in Senua's unique reality, the sound team leaned heavily on binaural recording and mixing specifically for headphones.

Here, Ninja Theory audio team members David García Díaz, Daniele Galante, Alessio Mellina, Pablo Cañas Llorente, and Matteo Tummino talk about using binaural recording for voices and sound effects, recording ambiences on location in Iceland (and Scotland and Wales), creating a complex foley system and breath system for Senua and her enemies, mixing for headphones, and much, much more!


Interview by Jennifer Walden, photos courtesy of Xbox Game Studios; Ninja Theory
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Ninja Theory’s Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II is a third-person action-adventure game that embraces its cinematic, narrative-driven gameplay style. Senua’s adventure has her battling physical enemies as well as psychological ones. Both aspects are crucial to her story. In this sequel to Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (2017), the game’s creators focus on how Senua’s psychosis manifests in the physical world and shapes a reality that’s unique to her. It was important for the audio team to represent this in the game in a way that was respectful and accurate, so they collaborated with Paul Fletcher (Bernard Wolfe Professor of Health Neuroscience, Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge), as well as partnered with the RCE Wellbeing Hub (formerly Recovery College East) to get first-hand examples of how different people experience psychosis. The knowledge and feedback the audio team gained allowed them to make decisions that would keep their work on the topic grounded and personal, but also respectful and representing real people’s experiences in some way.

Here, Ninja Theory game audio team members David García Díaz (Audio Director), Daniele Galante (Lead Sound Designer, Expert), Alessio Mellina (Expert Technical Sound Designer), Pablo Cañas Llorente (Expert Audio Designer), and Matteo Tummino (Senior Sound Designer) talk about using binaural recording for both voices and sound effects and mixing specifically for headphones to create an enveloping and immersive sound experience that effectively portrays Senua’s psychosis, recording ambiences in ambisonics or binaural on location in Iceland, Scotland and Wales, as well as capturing many IRs in these locations, to create an environmental sound that felt natural and real, using vocals/whispers as a starting point for creating spooky and unsettling atmospheric sounds throughout the game, collaborating with the band Heilung and other vocal artists to create the game’s signature music, creating foley and breath systems that could deliver a realistic, complex and compelling feeling for the characters in the game, and much, much more!



Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II – Official Trailer | The Game Awards 2023


Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II – Official Trailer | The Game Awards 2023

It’s recommended that players wear headphones while playing Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II to get the best immersive experience. Can you talk about your use of binaural recording for the game? (Was this used just for dialogue? Were sound effects or foley recorded using a binaural mic as well?)

David García Díaz (DD): Immersion is one of our pillars, not only for the audio team but for the whole of the game. Our goal is to create an illusion, a way of making the world of Senua be as believable as possible to the ears and eyes of our players.

Senua experiences psychosis; she sees and hears the world in her own way. She lives in a non-shared reality. It’s unique to her. There is a constant question of “How is Senua hearing/feeling at this moment?” This is the key element from which we started building our audio immersion, and it has informed our decisions through development.

One of those decisions is the importance of using headphones and the use of binaural recordings.

…headphones sit over your ears… isolating you from the world a little, and then in tandem with binaural audio, they add the impression of a three-dimensional space around you.

Auditory hallucinations are one of the symptoms of Senua’s psychosis. We felt the best way to represent them in our game is through headphones: headphones sit over your ears, creating a private space, isolating you from the world a little, and then in tandem with binaural audio, they add the impression of a three-dimensional space around you.

We used binaural audio for the internal voices: the furies, the Shadow, etc. Every voice that lives inside Senua is recorded with a binaural microphone. This allows for intimacy and also a sense of space, of movement, of tactile physical experience through sound. The voices are real for Senua, and by recording them this way, we achieved a good depiction of what it is to experience auditory hallucinations.

It was very important to us to not just add the sounds of what she can see/hear, but also infuse them with ‘how she is feeling,’…

We also used binaural for some of the sounds within the world. As said before, the “real” world is constantly painted by Senua’s mind, so we injected processed sound into the backgrounds. Some of them are recorded binaurally, and some of them are processed with plugins that transform them into binaural sounds (with plugins like dearVR, or similar). It was very important to us to not just add the sounds of what she can see/hear, but also infuse them with “how she is feeling,” which can help to make a more intimate or more personal experience of elements such as the sounds of nature. A good example of this is in the first chapter of the game, she feels the guilt of all the people lost to the sea, and this is represented by the sounds of broken, strange voices around her, gasping for air, choking, screaming, etc.

Music also has binaural elements, being mostly used in voices/choir. It works really well in intimate moments. A good example is in the second chapter when Senua needs to walk one more time toward the vision of Dillion’s Blood Eagle. In that cutscene, we have the shadow voice accompanied by a soft melody sung by the furies. That helps to glue and wrap that sonic moment in a very special way. Binaural makes this moment feel really intimate.

…technology is always secondary to artistic vision for us. Binaural is the result of searching for a way of doing something specific.

Ultimately, our goal was to create an experience that feels genuine. And binaural audio is a very important part of it. It’s important to say though that technology is always secondary to artistic vision for us. Binaural is the result of searching for a way of doing something specific. To achieve our vision, we also needed to change the way we record talent. How important is movement for example, or small imperfections, or how the scripts are written? Sometimes improvisation is important to allow for sparks that won’t happen otherwise.
 

Hellblade2_sound-02

How else did you push sound immersion for the game? Can you talk about your creative and technical approach to getting the most immersive sound possible? Did you take a novel approach to placing emitters, or creating systems to support an immersive mix, and so on?

Daniele Galante (DG): Having a grounded and believable layer greatly helps the player to fully immerse into the setting of the game. Once you manage to achieve that, then it’s easier to sell the more abstract aspect of Senua’s mind. This is why environmental sounds are so important for us.

Hellblade 2 is set (mostly) in real, existing locations in Iceland, so we had the chance to try and reproduce the true atmosphere of these places. Onsite field recording would have been a natural choice.

… we even recorded some parts of the music and sound effects onsite to take advantage of the unique acoustics of Iceland.

We went to Iceland three times to try and capture as much material as possible, adding one extra trip to Scotland and Wales which have similar locations that could complement our Icelandic recordings. As for everything else in the game, we did not go completely through the conventional way, with many of our recordings done directly in ambisonics or binaural. We also recorded many IRs of some of the places we visited, and in some trips, together with Heilung, we even recorded some parts of the music and sound effects onsite to take advantage of the unique acoustics of Iceland.

As you can notice by playing, Icelandic weather and environment can be harsh and unwelcoming, so recording there wasn’t always easy, and more than once we had to fight against really bad conditions. It was a challenging but incredibly rewarding experience and it led us to very unique recordings that we then complemented with some libraries.

With all the gathered material we then created rich 3rd and 2nd order ambisonic beds that we complemented with lots of positional emitters.

With all the gathered material we then created rich 3rd and 2nd order ambisonic beds that we complemented with lots of positional emitters. The ambience keeps moving and evolving with the player progression: every little rain drop, stream, wind gust, wood creaking, etc. is purposely placed by one of us to help narrative and immersion.

Hellblade2_sound-03

Ninja audio team on a recording trip in the Isle of Skye

Alessio Mellina (AM): From a technical standpoint, our pursuit of immersion meant looking at ways we could make the real world surrounding Senua as believable as possible. We decided that a highly realistic sense of space would be the foundation upon which we could build the entirety of the audio experience, a lens through which we could frame all of Senua’s aural perceptions, both real and imagined.

With PA, we were able to achieve an accurate representation of the natural soundscapes featured in the game, with an acoustic simulation that did not require a lot of resources at runtime.

The main way we achieved this was the adoption of Project Acoustics (PA), a Microsoft technology that employs a wave acoustics engine for 3D environments. PA uses an offline bake of the game environment to model acoustic behaviors like occlusion, obstruction, portaling, and reverberation. With PA, we were able to achieve an accurate representation of the natural soundscapes featured in the game, with an acoustic simulation that did not require a lot of resources at runtime.

Hellblade2_sound-04

Probes: visual representation of PA’s probes, which are used to calculate emitters and listener positions.

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Voxels: visual representation of PA’s voxels, which are used to calculate sound propagation in the environment. Landscape materials are also taken into account, where each material has an absorption coefficient that affects the resulting reverberation times.

A brief overview of the process: setting up a level with Project Acoustics requires a first step of tagging all the static meshes that need to be considered for the acoustic simulation, as well as the nav map (an optimization step to only place probes in the areas where the character can be); all the materials from the tagged meshes are then assigned an absorption coefficient, which defines how reverberant each area should be; since the full acoustic computation is quite complex, a pre-bake step is used to get a simplified preview of the acoustic space, useful to verify that all the probes and voxels are placed correctly; finally, all the information is sent to cloud computing, so that a bake can be achieved in minutes instead of hours if it were to be calculated locally.

Pablo Cañas Llorente (PL): From an artistic point of view, we’ve been investigating more about ambisonics, especially the design aspect of it.

We started using ambisonics for grounded ambiences using the IEM toolkit and dearVR.

We quickly understood the power of it. You can convey with one ambisonic bed a rich and detailed soundscape. Ambisonics especially give a lot of depth and immersion in the medium and far distance. This, in addition to manually placed emitters for the close perspective, completed the soundscape.

…being able to design in ambisonics meant that it would work in headphones but also in surround if needed.

Also, the way Wwise does the downmix worked very well to support our binaural pipeline, being able to design in ambisonics meant that it would work in headphones but also in surround if needed. One example for me is in the last chapter of the game during the forest area. As a main grounded bed layer, I had one ambisonic 3rd order that conveyed a haunted forest. To achieve this, I needed to have a nice contrast in perspective having close, medium, and far sounds that worked cohesively within the ambisonics. This ended up being the main protagonist for selling the environment.

We also pushed ambisonics for non-grounded moments like in Chapter 2 when Senua engages the puzzle in the Settlement. An ambisonic layer of designed abstract and distorted voices, screams, and shouts moves around, giving the feeling of oppression, stress, and being surrounded.

David also used this format for music. For example in Chapter 4, whenever you light the first and second brazier, an ambisonics layer of voices chanting like a choir starts playing (performed by the Furies: Abbi and Helen).
 

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The sound design is sinister and spooky. What was your approach to designing a game’s worth of spooky, atmospheric sound design elements? What were some of your keywords or parameters?

— Can you share details on how you created these elements? Were there particular plug-ins or processing chains that were helpful for these? What were some of your sources for these designs – custom recordings? Indie sound libraries? Voice recordings (screams, whispers, etc.)?

DG: The main goal was to tell the story from Senua’s perspective, including her experience of psychosis. One of the most common symptoms is hearing voices, and this is not limited to just clear and spoken words, but they can often sound broken, morphed, and almost unrecognizable. So that was the place to start with.

All were mostly recorded with our binaural microphone, so they were already naturally placed in the world around the player.

We created a huge library of vocal performances of every kind, made by ourselves or by performers and talents. These recordings could be made of words, dialogue lines, or just any type of mouth noise. All were mostly recorded with our binaural microphone, so they were already naturally placed in the world around the player.

Most of our sound design starts from this voice library. Senua would always be accompanied by these sounds throughout the whole game.

Most of our sound design starts from this voice library. Senua would always be accompanied by these sounds throughout the whole game. Some of them are very clean and recognizable, and some of them are processed and distorted, depending on Senua’s state of mind in that specific moment. When you start to be surrounded by sounds that “seem” like voices, but you are not very sure they are, this is where I think your brain starts to feel a sense of dread and you passively build unsettling emotions.

 


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The keyword behind everything we do is ‘Narrative.’ Every step of the pipeline serves that.

The processing for these sounds, but also for all the dialogue that happens in Senua’s head is very bespoke. The keyword behind everything we do is “Narrative.” Every step of the pipeline serves that. We have a handcrafted approach where the processing is always modulated in many ways depending on how a specific word is impacting Senua’s state of mind at that moment. If in a phrase there are words that mean something for her like “failure,” “guilt,” “death,” etc. this is when maybe we introduce some distortions, slight pitch shifting and detuning, or whatever we feel is appropriate.

Often this processing is paired with some sound effects that reinforce it even more. It’s one of the reasons dubbing is a near-to-impossible task for this game: because voice and sound design are one thing and re-dubbing the game in another language would mean redoing most of the sound design of the game.

…dubbing is a near-to-impossible task for this game: because voice and sound design are one thing and re-dubbing the game in another language would mean redoing most of the sound design of the game.

On top of the voice library, we spent most of our pre-production building our experimental library. Sources could be other libraries or our own recordings. We would heavily process them to create some weird textures and tones and then add them to the library without knowing yet how they would be used. We used every type of plugin but also our pretty big modular synth, which can create some very weird stuff! I am pretty bad with it, but others like Alessio, Jamie, and Matteo can do some miracles when using it.

At first, there were no particular guidelines other than trying to create sounds that would be interesting, unsettling, and weird.

This ended up being the most used library throughout the whole production. At first, there were no particular guidelines other than trying to create sounds that would be interesting, unsettling, and weird. We started from a place of pure experimentation. By working together, sharing our experiments and ideas, we started to develop a more cohesive style that is well represented in the final result. Now when looking for sources, we definitely tend to like more organic and less noisy textures. Even our more distorted sounds are often cleaned from their noisier part as they can take up a lot of space without really adding much to the identity of the sound design. For sounds like the watery spheres that Senua uses to modify the world around her during the puzzle sections, I would use plugins like MRatioMB from Melda which allows to manipulate the sound towards its more tonal aspect, reducing the noisy part of the spectrum since water sources can be very noisy. For more natural sounds like rain and dripping, I would sometimes use a transient shaper to enhance the more textural aspect of it, allowing it to have a present raining sound that would not cover up too many other elements of the ambience.

Sometimes it is more about space and movement: One of the hardest challenges I faced was to design the fight against the Tyrant, where there is the very powerful voice of the Tyrant that has to coexist with the Godi voice, the dense storm that he brings with him, and the music. Since the two voices are in perfect sync, I moved the Tyrant completely to the sides of the stereo spectrum while keeping the Godi more central. I further increased the width by applying slightly different processing and pitch shifting to the left and right channels; this gave a stronger feeling of the voice surrounding you. Thunder sounds are also quite powerful and designed, so I carefully placed their transient moments on top of some meaningful words he was saying. Distortions (in this specific case I used Infiltrator for it) and other elements of the post-processing are also coming in and out depending on what needed more space in that specific moment and they are usually applied to specific parts of the spectrum for the same reason.

Matteo Tummino (MT): We have always been given the freedom to experiment with different ideas and tools when it came to creative sound design in the game, as long as it was functional and fitting to carry and complement Senua’s journey.

One of the signature sounds for the Hiddenfolks…was originally created using animal recordings fed into a combination of vocoders and delays.

My approach has generally been oriented towards finding new sources to manipulate. One of the signature sounds for the Hiddenfolks, the ethereal presences in the cave of Chapter 4, was originally created using animal recordings fed into a combination of vocoders and delays. I have also extensively used modules to mangle recorded sources, specifically Magneto and Starlab by Strymon and Nebulae by Qu-Bit. I find that reaching for modules can be a rewarding way of solving some creative blocks that sometimes arise within the DAW, giving one the ability to be able to generate many different sound signatures on the go.

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Because we specifically wanted the game audio to work well on headphones, other techniques were utilized to create a spatial soundscape even in abstract sound design. For example, Sound Particles and dearVR PRO (as David already mentioned) were useful for recording the automation of sounds moving around a source and exporting them as ambisonics beds.

 

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Can you talk about the music for the game and your collaboration with Heilung?

DD: Music helped tell our story. It amplifies emotions, pushing the listeners’ feelings in a specific way. It creates context, and mood if needed. It helps with flow, and movement, and it creates bonding with our character when combined with the use of “Themes.” Think about Indiana Jones and how well the main theme is integrated with Indy.

My challenge was understanding which elements of the first game made the “soul” of the music, and how to expand it from there.

The elements that made the music feel like “our music” to me were:

• The theme: as a connective tissue, using a simple melody as a way to say to our listeners, “this is about Senua.” Making that connection between the player and our character. The main theme of the first game came from a song titled “Just like Sleep” from the band Passarella Death Squad

• The Aesthetics: Hellblade has a very unconventional style. Since our character is a Celtic warrior from Orkney, it may be natural to go with a more “folklore” style of music, but following our principle of immersion and empathy with the character, we felt that was constraining our way of expressing her feelings through music. There are a lot of different styles during the musical journey.

So I grew the music from this angle. I kept the main theme from Hellblade, morphing it to fit better within this game, so sometimes it is darker and more aggressive, and sometimes it is more tender (just with a piano) in a very direct and transparent form. We kept the idea of a wide stylistic range of music and made it even wider: electronic music, orchestra, piano, Folklore, but also different approaches to harmony, etc.

Something I’m really interested in is the use of improvisation. I really love Jazz and it felt that improvising was the right thing to do within some context for this game.

Especially for Chapter 4, the level where Senua is finding the Hiddenfolk, most of the music was improvised.

The use of voices as part of the music is much bigger in this game, as is the use of binaural to record them. But still, it was missing something (sometimes) and it was that constant modulation, that imperfection, that spark that only comes with something that is happening in the moment. Especially for Chapter 4, the level where Senua is finding the Hiddenfolk, most of the music was improvised.

It was a section of two voices (Helen and Abbi) and me on the keyboard. I wanted to capture the drift, the out-of-tune, the imperfections and I needed the right instrument to drive what the voices were doing. I found the Seaboard from Roli and the Osmose from Expressive E were perfect for this. I could improvise and create this endless detuning and drifting from one note to the next and Helen and Abbi would improvise trying to follow me with as much freedom as they could. The result was really interesting. And I feel it works perfectly as you traverse the caves of the Hiddenfolk.

Another element that made the music of our game feel compelling was collaboration. Heilung, Ren and Arunka, Monster factory, Abbi and Helen… it was a privilege to work with them.

At that early stage, [Heilung] created some songs and experiments, and that has helped us so much not only on music but on sound design.

Heilung came on board really early in the project, at a time when we still knew little of the game. We loved their music, their energy, their approach to creation. So we contacted them and I must say they were incredible from the very beginning. At that early stage, they created some songs and experiments, and that has helped us so much not only on music but on sound design. We used their recordings in a lot of places, especially vocals.

A bit later we went to Iceland together, exploring the game locations, getting inspiration, and doing some really interesting recordings.

The journey with Heilung was a very special one for me. Beyond everything, it is fascinating to see other people approach creation – the way they think about music, and their very personal pipeline of recording, writing, etc. It was a very special collaboration. Their art and craft is dispersed throughout the whole game.

[Ren and Arunka] did amazing throat singing, and some fantastic textures with the voice for us to play with.

We also had Ren and Arunka as very important collaborators. They did amazing throat singing, and some fantastic textures with the voice for us to play with. Also, Ren is incredible at playing wind instruments. I’m really grateful for the work we did together. Similarly to Heilung, their voices and instruments are in multiple places in the game.

To add in the dark side of the music, we also have The Monster Factory, a voice talent company led by Sebastian Croteau who specializes in heavy metal voices. As they say, “extreme voices for extreme sounds!” They provided those heavy metal voices that we used in the music in the Chapter 2 arena and in the Chapter 4 Illtauga Ritual.

The Chapter 2 Arena music is diegetic and runs through Project Acoustics making that section of the game feel really grounded. Music was there to support a dark ritual of sorts. By making the music not only diegetic but also react to the geometry being occluded, obstructed, and with the reverb morphing smoothly, it created a very tense and immersive moment.

The Chapter 2 Arena music is diegetic and runs through Project Acoustics making that section of the game feel really grounded.

For the more intimate musical moments, I worked a lot with Abbi and Helen, who also performed the two main voices that live with Senua. As I said before, we experimented a lot and tried to record and perform things in a bit of a different way. All their music work in the game is performed binaurally.

Ultimately, my work as the composer of the game was to make sense of all this material, selecting, curating, extracting, and reinjecting all these recordings into new songs or pieces while at the same time keeping the heart of the Hellblade music beating healthy.

“Læknisgaldr” – one of the songs recorded by Heilung for the game – is a good example of picking some material and adapting it. It’s a beautiful song with Maria’s voice singing a really special melody that hits a vast array of emotions: calm, hope, mystery, sadness, joy, relief, love, peace, warmth… That song appears two or three times in the game in a completely different package. In the Sea Giant backstory, it’s closer to its true form and serves to help connect with the story of Sea Giant. Later on, at the end of the forest of Chapter 6 after finding Thorgestr again, just before Senua arrives finally to Borgarvirki, that song, wrapped in a quintet of strings, delivers that moment of narrative in such a beautiful way, while the narrator is speaking about what happened to Senua and his friends in the forest of the last chapter; it makes that moment of closure feel really special.

I’m a big supporter of doing music in-house.

This is a process that I enjoyed very much and I’m really happy to have been surrounded by amazing talent. Not only outside Ninja Theory but also within. Jamie and Matteo did some work on the music of the game, and I feel really proud of them and their contribution. It’s not easy, and they did incredible work. I’m a big supporter of doing music in-house. We did the majority of Saga that way, and I think the mix of that with some support from collaborators worked really well for us.

MT: Personally, this was my first experience writing music for a game. As for the sound design, I have been given the ability to experiment and try new things in the context of the narrative.

…every combat cue is implemented based on contextual data coming from the combat system in-engine, such as progress in the fight and custom events.

My contribution was creating some combat music, for which a combination of the amazing stems from Heilung, sample libraries, and synthesizers were used. I went for the idea of relying heavily on rhythmic elements during combat, as the fights in the game feel like a beautifully choreographed dance. Because of that, every combat cue is implemented based on contextual data coming from the combat system in-engine, such as progress in the fight and custom events. Most of the combat music layers I made were created with a mix of source recordings coming from cellos and a custom bowed guitar that was custom-built for us, modular synths, and VST instruments.

…I employed a variety of techniques to create rhythms, such as the new warping and generative MIDI tools introduced in the latest versions of Ableton…

As I mentioned, because the foundational element of the combat music was percussive, I employed a variety of techniques to create rhythms, such as the new warping and generative MIDI tools introduced in the latest versions of Ableton, which gave me a great starting point to lay down ideas and trigger recorded or resampled Viking drums.

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Can you talk about the foley for the game? (There are so many wonderfully textured surfaces, gritty and crunchy footsteps, and such lovely detail in the foley work). Also, what was your approach to the foley system?

PL: Foley keeps the characters grounded and makes you believe they are in the world. The main vision was to achieve a realistic approach without relying too much on hyperrealism or being too bombastic. We wanted to keep the characters grounded in the world in a natural way and give a nice contrast between the sound design and the voices Senua hears which are very present.

There are moments in our game where we let foley be the protagonist, and through it, convey an emotion with a minimalistic approach.

Foley helped us build dynamism and storytelling in the mix: There are moments in our game where we let foley be the protagonist, and through it, convey an emotion with a minimalistic approach. For example in a cinematic Senua walks on the water; instead of doing a big moment in sound design, we decided to just have the textures of the foot stepping on water – very delicate and intimate – making it more impactful and interesting. It’s a less is more approach.

To achieve our vision, we worked closely with the foley team at Molinare, who handled the recording and edit of mostly all the foley. Working with Molinare has been an amazing experience. They are such a talented team. They are experts in their craft and it really shows in the game but on top of that, it’s really a joy to work with them.

Since the first day, it felt like a collaboration rather than just asking for assets. We had a pretty tight schedule and they managed to deliver amazing quality. Not only that, but they were happy to take last-minute tasks which we highly appreciate. We, as a team, are really grateful for this.

We rely on the velocity between different points of articulation of the character: this would give us a set of values that drive RTPCs that control the volume of a few layers of leather, cloth, and gadgets.

In terms of systems, we created procedural foley for the character movements. We rely on the velocity between different points of articulation of the character: this would give us a set of values that drive RTPCs that control the volume of a few layers of leather, cloth, and gadgets.

For footsteps, we worked with the animation department and created a system based on procedurally generated curves for footfall detection. This helps us avoid having to manually tag every animation footstep. This saved us a lot of time.

For footsteps, we worked with the animation department and created a system based on procedurally generated curves for footfall detection.

At the beginning, we had a very simple system based on which material Senua was stepping on, but it sounded unnatural especially because the landscape of Senua’s Saga is very detailed with blending textures, resulting in a complex and realistic environment, and we could not just create a system based on a single material approach.

Our solution was to query multiple surfaces within a landscape with their associated weights in percentage. We use three layers of detection, tracking the percentage of the materials within that part of the landscape. Then we use these values to set the RTPC for each surface type.

For example, if Senua’s footstep is in an area with grass (60%), dirt (30%), and gravel (10%), the grass will be the louder element, but we will still hear a blend of dirt and gravel making it feel more connected with the environment.

This system was inspired by the one used in Tell Me Why after we saw an article of their thought process.

For combat, we tried the same approach, but we felt it was a bit flat in terms of detail, and due to the sudden movement in animations like rolls, dodges, and evades, we felt it was not representing the weight and believability.

For combat… We decided to create bespoke foley for all animations.

We decided to create bespoke foley for all animations. It’s an approach that takes more time but the results for us were better in terms of how much detail and accuracy was added. Also, it served the vision of combat in general which is a more cinematic approach.

After all, we wanted to achieve the best quality possible and try to do justice to the amazing visuals we were working with, so for us, it was worth taking the hard path regarding this. At the end of the day, we serve the narrative and immersion of the game and that’s all it matters.

 

Hellblade2_sound-10

What went into the sounds of combat? How did you want these encounters to feel for the player, and how did you realize that through sound?

DG: We wanted our combat to feel visceral, cinematic, grounded, and brutal. Sound obviously played a big role in achieving that. Our goal was to have the player so immersed to make them forget they were playing a game. Because of that, most of our references were from movies and TV series, like Game of Thrones (“Battle of the Bastards,” in particular), Vikings or The Northman.

Being always a 1v1, we could afford to go into details and when I say that I mean REALLY into details. We wanted Senua and the opponent to feel alive. No matter what the player is doing, they should sound believable and accurately portray the brutal situation they are in.

…we knew that simply reusing some grunts with whatever number of variations would not be enough.

For us, the most important element to achieve this was the vocal performances: we knew that simply reusing some grunts with whatever number of variations would not be enough. We decided to go the extra mile and record bespoke vocals for almost every animation. Senua alone has more than 1200 animations in combat and actress Melina Juergens (who played Senua) performed the vast majority of them several times to allow us to also add variations. We ended up with thousands of VO grunts and this allowed us to give a super realistic and believable feeling to the combat.

The same process went for all the enemies, each one of them with an average of 200 animations. The slavers were recorded with several actors since it was important to treat each enemy as an individual and not like a generic “enemy type.” Each kill bears a weight on Senua’s conscience, so we must give her opponent as much humanity as we can. The more real we make it feel, the more brutal it is.

…in most recordings we needed to use a face camera and Timecode that then would go to animators for their facial pipeline.

It was an incredibly ambitious goal and what made it even more difficult was that each line or grunt had to be recorded with facial animation too. This meant that in most recordings we needed to use a face camera and Timecode that then would go to animators for their facial pipeline. There were some cases where we could not record facial together with the actor performance. In that situation, we would help animators to “dub” the facial animation on top of the original performance – kind of the opposite of doing ADR.

This was mostly handled by our Sound Designer Jordan Payne, who alone took care of the vast majority of the human recording and implementation, and our Senior sound designer Jamie Molloy, who did most of the Draugar. They both went the extra mile and delivered outstanding work.

A special mention goes also to The Monster Factory, who performed almost all the Draugar and Illtauga.

A special mention goes also to The Monster Factory, who performed almost all the Draugar and Illtauga. It is rare to encounter such a talented and passionate group of people. They not only delivered an incredible extreme performance, but in some cases, they also helped find the right direction and personality of each enemy.

We paired all of this with a quite complex breathing system that procedurally uses fatigue, health, stamina, and other parameters to drive Senua and the enemy exertion when there are no specific combat animations playing. One of the things that often breaks immersion for me is when characters go silent right after attacking or taking damage, so we wanted ours to always be present. We handle Senua breathing differently from traversal to combat and in the latter, the system is particularly dynamic to allow it to react quickly to the fast-paced situations.

As Pablo already mentioned, we took a similar approach with foley. Molinare performed and recorded bespoke foley for each animation treating the game exactly as if it were a movie, ending up with thousands of foley assets just for combat.
 

Hellblade2_sound-11

Can you elaborate on the breathing system you mentioned before?

DG: Senua must feel alive throughout the whole game, and one of the tools to achieve this is having her breathing throughout the game. There are two systems that drive the breathing: one used in combat and another for traversal.

The two systems have several points in common, but they also work differently. The base functioning is heavily inspired by games like Inside. We have a pool of exhales and inhales, and we alternate them to create a procedural loop that gets stopped every time the character talks or when a cinematic starts.

There are two systems that drive the breathing: one used in combat and another for traversal.

In traversal, we can afford to have a slower-paced and less reactive system compared to combat. We can control it better since the game is quite linear and we usually know how Senua is feeling during a specific moment. We then pick an appropriate context (anxious, scared, relaxed, upset, cold) which usually has several intensities that can be controlled either manually, if some specific events are happening, or by gameplay parameters like fatigue, proximity to specific objects or characters, etc.

Each one-shot is treated as a dialogue line: we make sure they always start with an inhale, and we always play it after an exhale.

On top of that, we also have more expressive one-shots that we use in moments that are not covered well enough by our system, for example when Senua sees or hears something that impacts her. Each one-shot is treated as a dialogue line: we make sure they always start with an inhale, and we always play it after an exhale.

Again, like for almost everything else in the game, we heavily handcrafted how the breathing behaves throughout the experience. Gameplay sequences like climbing, squeeze-through, shimmies, etc. are usually a mix of linear and procedural breathing that kicks in if the player stops progressing with the scene.

We have an intensity RTPC that goes from 0 to 1 that always decreases over time until it reaches the resting value of 0…

Combat is quite different. It’s only one context; it is way more reactive, and intensity fluctuates much faster. We have an intensity RTPC that goes from 0 to 1 that always decreases over time until it reaches the resting value of 0 (unless Senua is hurt, in that case, the resting phase can increase up to 0.4) or until some specific actions increase it, simulating the adrenaline of the character. Each range of this overall value is associated with a specific pool of breathing intensities – low value equals calmer breathing, high value equals more intense breathing.

Every action or event adds to the adrenaline intensity RTPC and immediately spikes it up a certain amount, which then will decrease automatically until another event spikes it up again. Some of these events are quite frequent and can be simple actions like evades or attacks, which would create smaller spikes adding only 0.2 to the overall value while others could be less frequent, like killing an enemy, that immediately spikes the adrenaline to 1 which is the maximum. In that way, we managed to have a fast-paced and very reactive system that paired with all the bespoke voice reactions creates a believable and realistic character in combat. This system has been integrated for Senua and also her enemies.
 

Hellblade2_sound-12

Hellblade 2 is a cinematic, story-driven linear game. What advantages did this offer the sound team? What challenges did this style of game present in terms of sound?

PL: The main advantage of working on a game like Hellblade 2 is the ability to create bespoke moments all the time, giving us the opportunity to push the boundaries not just for sound design and voice design but also for dynamism in the mix and storytelling.

It gave us a filmic approach of telling the moment-to-moment story with sound. For example, in the final battle with the “Godi,” in the second phase we switch the mix completely. The furies throughout the game sometimes are a bit blurred but in this particular moment, we wanted them to be upfront in the mix, and everything else but the music takes a backseat, making that scene more impactful.

One of the main challenges was representing how Senua listens to the world.

One of the things we are more grateful for is having the chance to design sounds for diverse styles, from grounded to abstract.

One of the main challenges was representing how Senua listens to the world. This was difficult for two reasons.

Firstly, audio must have purpose and serve the narrative. As a sound designer, you need to think about what you want to achieve in each specific scene or moment, how you are going to structure it, and think about context and continuity. All the moments need to flow as a cohesive piece.

All the moments need to flow as a cohesive piece.

Secondly, as a team, we needed to be on the same page creatively. We all have our own styles, but we needed a common denominator to keep a cohesive sound design across the game. As we said before, using voices as a starting point of the sound design process helped us to achieve this.

Voices and sound design are very tied together in different moments of the game. To give an example, in Chapter 2 there is a cutscene where Senua arrives at an abandoned settlement, and she can feel something is wrong. I wanted to have an intro sonically where Senua transitions from listening to Thorgestr (more grounded mix) to what she is experiencing coming from inside the settlement (more abstract). Because of that, I decided to create a riser moment with a few low-pitched and filtered voices which are a combination of whispers and growls. Some voices have been recorded binaurally and some were processed in binaural using dearVR. I then blended them with a couple of heavily processed layers: one layer is made by rocks hitting each other, very low pitched and filtered with a bit of reverb and delay. (I really like to use the Valhalla Delay for this); the other one is a riser from a library, heavily filtered and modulated. All of this combined gives the feeling of Senua getting into a personal and intimate space where she can hear and feel what has happened to that settlement.

After Senua is fully immersed in the past of the settlement, we can hear a combination of clear and heavily processed voices. This gives contrast and dynamism making it more interesting.

After Senua is fully immersed in the past of the settlement, we can hear a combination of clear and heavily processed voices. This gives contrast and dynamism making it more interesting. For the heavily processed voices, I used a combination of Valhalla Delay, Soundtoys Devil-Loc, Crystallizer and Infiltrator; for the clear ones, I only use a bit of Valhalla delay, looking for just a lightly diffused slap back to glue them with the rest of the sound design.

This is just one example of many cases where the voices and sound design are used seamlessly to tell the story.
 

Hellblade2_sound-13

What were some of your biggest creative challenges or hurdles for the sound of this game?

DD: Personally, one of the biggest challenges for me was to balance heritage and evolution – understanding what made our first Hellblade unique, what worked, what did not, and what didn’t add anything special. Once I distilled those elements, I understood how they can evolve, and how to introduce new elements, and all this without changing that heart, that soul that makes the experience feel unique.

The pursuit of a distinctive voice, a way of manifesting the invisible and the hidden, to create something that resonates with oneself…is what gives meaning to the craft.

I deeply value identity and personality in the arts. The pursuit of a distinctive voice, a way of manifesting the invisible and the hidden, to create something that resonates with oneself (or, in our case, with our team) is what gives meaning to the craft. I feel that is something that is beyond the specifics of a project and it’s more a part of our quest as a team of sound artists looking to tell a story in our own way. That is the biggest challenge. And it’s one that we should always keep alive.

…on the subject of lived experience, we partnered with the RCE Wellbeing Hub (formerly Recovery College East) to understand directly from people the impact psychosis and the attached stigma can have on people’s lives.

Another challenging element is the experience of Senua’s psychosis. It’s such a complex and sensible topic and it’s really important to do it from a position of absolute respect and truth. To achieve that we have been collaborating with Paul Fletcher (Bernard Wolfe Professor of Health Neuroscience, Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge), but also on the subject of lived experience, we partnered with the RCE Wellbeing Hub (formerly Recovery College East) to understand directly from people the impact psychosis and the attached stigma can have on people’s lives.

Hearing and learning from them, as well as receiving feedback on our work and getting first-hand examples of how different people experience psychosis, has allowed us to make the right decisions, and to keep our work on the topic grounded and personal, but also respectful and representing real people’s experiences in some way.
 

Hellblade2_sound-14

Hellblade 2 was created using Unreal Engine 5. Did the sound team use UE5’s MetaSounds audio system or Quartz? Can you talk about your experience with UE5 for sound on Hellblade 2?

AM: While we did use native UE4 Audio for our previous projects (the first Hellblade and Bleeding Edge), we decided to switch to Wwise at the beginning of Saga.

We started development before the release of UE5, so we did not have access to Unreal’s new audio systems from the get-go.

By using a middleware solution, we were able to minimize the disruption to our audio pipeline as we eventually switched over to the latest version of Unreal.

…we relied heavily on visual scripting with Blueprints for audio implementation since we were able to carry over experience and systems developed during our previous projects.

That said, we relied heavily on visual scripting with Blueprints for audio implementation since we were able to carry over experience and systems developed during our previous projects.

Wwise gave us a lot of flexibility on the audio side, while Blueprints let us integrate seamlessly with the work of other disciplines.
 

Hellblade2_sound-15

What were some of your biggest technical challenges or hurdles for the sound of this game?

AM: This was the first big project in a long time where we used audio middleware, so there was a learning curve for many of us with regard to best practices and workflows; there are many ways to achieve very similar results, but the implications of choosing one way over the others are not always apparent.

As an example, one aspect that required a lot of iteration was performance and optimization: Wwise’s soundbank workflow is quite different from Unreal’s native audio data management, and it took some iterations to strike the right balance between quality and performance.

…Wwise’s soundbank workflow is quite different from Unreal’s native audio data management, and it took some iterations to strike the right balance between quality and performance.

To mitigate this issue, we leveraged the expertise of our audio programmers, who helped us make the Wwise/Unreal integration as seamless as possible. Some key areas of improvement were the addition of automation steps to source control when generating soundbanks, as well as bespoke systems to handle audio that required captioning or displaying localized text. The ultimate goal was to leverage our previous experience with the Unreal environment and supplement it with custom tools.

Another technical challenge was related to binaural audio. Since we have a lot of binaural content in the game, and most of it is used to relay crucial information to the player, we needed to make sure it would always come across as intended. However, this was not the case when testing the game on a wide range of different speaker setups and configurations, as the perceived loudness was hard to balance against the rest of the mix. At an early stage of development, we considered using alternative recording methods to supplement binaural audio – such as switching to an ambisonic version of the recording when playing on a surround system – but we discarded that option because it would have more than doubled the workload and complexity, which was not something we could afford.

In the end, we decided to focus our efforts on delivering the best possible mix for headphones, instead of trying to cater to a wider range of audio outputs and compromising our ideal target in the process. We resorted instead to simply lowering the volume of binaural content across the board when playing on speaker setups.
 

Hellblade2_sound-16

What was your approach to the mix?

DG and PL: Since Hellblade relies heavily on binaural sounds, listening in headphones is essential to fully experience the game. It felt natural to then mix directly in headphones rather than using speakers.

…listening in headphones is essential to fully experience the game. It felt natural to then mix directly in headphones rather than using speakers.

That brings some challenges: It can be fatiguing; headphones can heavily colour the mix and the result on speakers can be wildly different. To solve the colouring, we ended up using a very flat and dynamic model of headphones, the Neumann NDH20 and NDH30. It took us a while to get used to them, but the amount of detail we could pick up compared to other models is surprising.

The way we structured the mix was to prioritize combat first, as we knew it would have been one of the more challenging tasks.

The way we structured the mix was to prioritize combat first, as we knew it would have been one of the more challenging tasks. Combat is intense and every fight is basically a set piece on its own requiring some bespoke decisions. During the Thorgestr fight, we knew we wanted to focus on him as a character so we prioritized his voice, while in other fights like the Draugar ritual, music has more of a central role, and such fights were treated almost as if they were music video clips. It was important to never forget though that Senua always has to be at the centre of everything, so her voice always needs to be audible, no matter how busy it gets.

Since music can be more or less intense depending on the fight, we used its RMS to define how much it would be ducked by other sounds…

To achieve clarity in these brutal situations, we heavily relied on dynamic ducking: Since music can be more or less intense depending on the fight, we used its RMS to define how much it would be ducked by other sounds like impacts, barks, etc. The ducking is both volume and frequency-based. The same approach is also applied to ambiences during the traversal moments to help dialogue stand out in the smoothest way possible.

One of the pillars of Hellblade is having seamless transitions between cinematics and gameplay. So, all cinematics were mixed at runtime and not pre-baked. This made the process quite slower, especially when focusing on the fine detail: you lose the comfort of working in a DAW and many automations had to be done live using RTPCs.
 

Hellblade2_sound-17

HB2 Audio team L to R: Pablo Cañas Llorente (Expert Audio Ninja), Matteo Tummino (Senior Audio Ninja), David García Díaz (Ninja Audio Director), Jordan Payne (Audio Ninja), Daniele Galante (Expert Audio Ninja), Jamie Molloy (Senior Audio Ninja), and Alessio Mellina (Expert Technical Audio Ninja)

What have you learned while creating the sound of Hellblade 2? What has this experience taught you?

DD: On this project, I worked also as a vision holder. This has allowed me to see the process of making a game through a different lens, and being a participant in decision-making at a narrative level, game structure, etc, has made me appreciate the importance of holding the right knowledge about the game in making audio decisions.

In the past, I have been less involved with other areas of the game, and with that comes a shallower knowledge of the narrative, purposes, context, etc. Having the right information and hopefully communicating it well has allowed us to make better decisions that ultimately I feel has positively affected the quality of the overall audio experience.

I learned how to focus in an ocean of infinite possibilities, and how important it is to give meaning and purpose to every sound you add to the game.

DG: Trying to depict psychosis through sound is not an easy task. It can be extremely stressful and fatiguing. It is a sound designer’s dream in a way as representing one’s mind leads to almost infinite creative freedom. But too much freedom can be disorienting, especially if everything you do has to serve a specific narrative. I learned how to focus in an ocean of infinite possibilities, and how important it is to give meaning and purpose to every sound you add to the game. We can sometimes get lost in technicalities, post-processing, editing, etc. But the real challenge for me was answering a simple question every time I was creating a sound: “what is the meaning of it and how can it help to tell Senua’s story?”

PL: This is the first project on which I personally worked with Unreal so I feel grateful to have that experience and still be learning how to use Blueprints. It provides me independence from a coder and allows me to iterate not just in the sound design but also in the logic. Learning more about binaural was very interesting. We used the Neumann head for the vast majority of our VO recordings. We also used binaural processing for a lot of sound design. Also, designing sound in ambisonics was amazing to learn.

One thing I have learned to appreciate during the production of the game is the value of simple and effective systems.

AM: One thing I have learned to appreciate during the production of the game is the value of simple and effective systems. When approaching game audio development from a technical standpoint, it’s important to think ahead and find solutions that can accommodate the evolving nature of game development, however, that can sometimes lead to over-engineering certain aspects of the implementation, which in turn can add unnecessary bloat to the workflow. So for many of the systems we have in the game, developing them was often an exercise of simplicity: let the implementation part of the process be as transparent and immediate as possible, so that the sound designer can quickly iterate as much as needed with as little friction as possible.

MT: I had the chance to go deep into experimenting how different software and hardware tools have the ability – each in their own way – to generate and transform simple sounds into something new. Previously, I would mostly rework library sounds, whereas on Saga, I learned what a difference originally sourced sounds can make in shaping a unique sonic signature for our game, and how the reuse of such sounds can convey common themes throughout the player experience.

SPECIAL THANKS: Special thanks to Siddhant Rhavi and Loong Wei Ding from the code team for their help and support.
 

A big thanks to the audio team at Ninja Theory – David García Díaz, Daniele Galante, Alessio Mellina, Pablo Cañas Llorente, and Matteo Tummino – for giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the sound of Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II and to Jennifer Walden for the interview!

 

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    Certainly, this library was carefully tagged with rich Soundminer metadata, including marks in the recordings highlighting interesting sounds.

    All the recordings were recorded, edited and mastered with love and care.

  • City Life Sound Effects Quiet Streets 3d Play Track 100 sounds included, 580 mins total From: $135 From: $78

    Quiet Streets 3D is the latest chapter in Articulated’s Quiet Streets series, offering a meticulously crafted collection of quiet urban ambiences. Designed with both creativity and precision in mind, this library captures the essence of urban stillness through the advanced Schoeps 3D ORTF recording technique, resulting in multi-dimensional soundscapes that reveal both horizontal and vertical spatial details.

    This library features 100 files delivered at 96kHz/24-bit. With a total size of 74.8 GB and over 9 hours and 40 minutes of carefully curated ambiences, Quiet Streets 3D is a comprehensive resource for creating immersive urban soundscapes.

    A Global Journey Through Quietude

     

    The recordings span cities across three continents, capturing the unique characteristics of urban environments in Paris, London, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Bangkok, Naples, Kuala Lumpur, Montreal, Regensburg, Hong Kong, New Delhi, Strasbourg, Singapore, and more. Each location offers its own subtle yet distinct textures, from the hushed buzz of a late-night street in Bangkok to the subdued murmurs of a Parisian alley at dawn.

    A Commitment to Quality

     
    Over two years, our team travelled to these cities to document quiet moments in urban life. Recordings were made at various times of day and across seasons, capturing the interplay of natural and environmental sounds. The ambiences feature layers of biophony (birdsong, rustling leaves), geophony (wind, distant rain), and faint traces of anthropophony (passing footsteps, distant traffic). Care was taken to minimize intrusive noises, ensuring that these recordings integrate seamlessly into projects that require clarity for dialogue or sound effects. Note: at times some distinctive authentic events were kept in order to give the choice for the editor to use them in their projects. These are tagged as marker on the spectrogram.

    A Versatile Tool for Storytelling

     
    The library’s 8-channel 3D ORTF format provides an intricate sense of space, making it ideal for surround sound configurations in film, video games, and immersive media. For those working in stereo, we’ve included a high-quality downmixed version of every file, offering flexibility without compromising quality.

    Recorded with the acclaimed Schoeps 3d ORTF system, it has a total of 8 discreet channels, 4 on the lower plane arranged in 2 pair of ORTF similar to a IRT-Cross, and doubled with a higher plane of 4 more microphones. The channel layout of the sound recorded and delivered is as this: L R Ls Rs hL hR hLs hRs (whereas h stand for high). Learn more about this configuration here: https://schoeps.de/en/products/surround-3d/ortf-3d/ortf-3d-outdoor-set.html

    Every file is embedded with UCS-compliant metadata, allowing for intuitive searching and streamlined integration into your workflow. The metadata includes detailed descriptors, location names, and environmental characteristics, making it easy to find the perfect ambience for any scene.

    A Timeless Collection for Any Project

     
    Whether you need the intimate quiet of a European alley or the expansive stillness of an Asian metropolis, Quiet Streets 3D provides a rich palette of urban soundscapes. This library is not just a collection of audio files—it’s a carefully curated journey through the subtleties of urban life, designed to enhance the emotional depth and spatial realism of your projects.

    With Quiet Streets 3D, you’re investing in a resource that will remain relevant across countless future projects.

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  • All files are recorded 32bit, 192 kHz, with RØDE NTG1, Line Audio Omni1 and FEL Clippy XLR EM272 microphones, Sound Devices MixPre-6 II recorder. Library contains wav files of driving, interior and exterior foley, mechanical and electrical sounds. It is also available in UCS.

  • Electricity Sound Effects Massive Thunder Play Track 616 sounds included, 217 mins total $29.99

    MASSIVE THUNDER – 616 files of Thunder sound effects, at varying distances and intensities. From low and slow rolling distant rumbles to violently fast and bombastic direct cracking impacts. Massive Thunder comes in at over 3 hours and 37 minutes of short and long scenes of thunder and lightning for every occasion. Recorded during several storm seasons and dozens of independent thunderstorms, with indoors and outdoors perspectives. Massive Thunder’s filenames are in the Universal Category System format with additional Metadata baked-in.

    Don’t need a Massive amount of Thunder and Lightning sound effects? We offer ‘Mini’ sound effect libraries as companions for all of our ‘Massive’ sound effect libraries. All recordings are unique to each library with no overlap. Go Mini today, and upgrade to the corresponding Massive library later, when you need more of that particular sound effect.

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  • Car Sound Effects Jaguar XJ 2010 full size car Play Track 46 sounds included, 60 mins total $65

    All files are recorded 32bit, 192 kHz, with RØDE NTG1, Line Audio Omni1, FEL Clippy XLR EM272 and JrF C-Series Pro+ microphones, Sound Devices MixPre-6 II recorder. The library contains wav files of driving, interior and exterior foley, mechanical and electrical sounds. It is also available in UCS.


   

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