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[Speevy]

So Metal Gear Solid is an adventure game?

No..

You're forced to kill enemies in Metal Gear Solid.

It's an action/adventure game.

Or if you want to get more specific, Stealth/Action

 

[arias]

No..

You're forced to kill enemies in Metal Gear Solid.

It's an action/adventure game.

Or if you want to get more specific, Stealth/Action

But plenty of adventure games like King's Quest VI required you to kill some foe at some point in time. Anyways, not worth more discussion for me.

 

[B-Ri]

was everyone playing a different demo i was? cause i was getting attacked by multiple enemies at once, i dunno about this whole "lets take turns thing". ive played the demo multiple times and i dont see this.

 

[Thunderbear]

Action/Adventure

You could even call them Fighting/Action or Fighting/Adventure because you're not simply killing enemies because they're after you. You kill them because they exist, and you kill them with style.

Well splitting hairs then IMO, but Action/Adventure sounds right to me .

 

[Lord Error]

No..

You're forced to kill enemies in Metal Gear Solid.

It's an action/adventure game.

Or if you want to get more specific, Stealth/Action

Ha, but in MGS you are not in fact forced to kill anyone! You can finish the whole 2nd and 3rd game just by hiding and running away. Even bosses, you can just put them to sleep Also, in games like HS and GoW, you don't kill enemies just because they exist, you kill them because they would otherwise kill you, and sometimes you kill them as a part of the puzzle even. It's hard to peg down what an "adventure game" really is, but I think your definition is pretty close to what I feel about the whole thing.

 

[Ragnarok10]

http://www.developmag.com/tutorials/28/Heard-About-Heavenly-Sword

Ninja Theory and SCEE discuss the audio production of a PS3 epic
By John Broomhall

In our monthly look behind the scenes on the audio production of a recently released or upcoming game, John Broomhall speaks to Ninja Theory's Tom Colvin and SCEE's Garry Taylor about the making of music and sound FX in Heavenly Sword…


HEAVENLY SWORD

Format: PlayStation 3
Developer: Ninja Theory
Publisher: SCEE


Audio Team:
For Ninja Theory: Tom Colvin (lead audio); Nitin Sawhney (original music score); Dave Sullivan (senior sound designer); Play It By Ear (fole­­­y and cut scene sound design); Harvey Cotton (audio programming)

For SCEE Cambridge: Garry Taylor (audio management and cut scene mixing); Lee Banyard, Jeremy Taylor, Andrew Riley (additional sound design); Ed Colyer, Shepperton Studios (additional foley); Dan Bardino, John Broomhall, Kenneth Young, Dave Ranyard (additional audio production); Chip Bell (audio programming)

The Numbers:
10 GB of sound FX, approximately three and a half hours of music, 4,500 lines of dialogue

With an epic story, epic game and an epic audio production, Heavenly Sword oozes high production values. Even before audio lead Tom Colvin’s personal two and a half year labour of love began, a belief in the power of sound had already been demonstrated by the team’s calling for potential signature sound designers to pitch – a practice more commonly associated with composers.

Colvin explains: “Al Zaleski’s demo work (at audio team Play It By Ear) stood head and shoulders above the others and his movie pedigree speaks for itself. To top that, he was great to work with. I’m really happy with the foley and combat sounds – all vitally important for a game so focused on graceful, agile, martial arts-style sword fighting.

“For me, sound is very ‘immediate’ to the player. Music has a well-established cultural language; sound is much less clearly delineated – but you can get straight to someone’s emotional responses with it – there’s little time for the brain to analyse. Sound is key in making this awesome weapon – the Heavenly Sword – come to life so you can sense its brooding power and almost hear it feeding off each kill.”

The game features a strong narrative exploring the interplay between heroine Nariko, her father, their clan subjugated by an evil king, and their guardianship of the Heavenly Sword, an historical weapon with the power to change their fate. Cut scenes play a vital role but with visual finessing continuing late into the project, the sheer scope of work was a challenge.

SCEE’s Garry Taylor elaborates: “There’s an hour and a half’s worth of cut scenes in eleven languages, so mixing alone was a massive undertaking. That’s why we ‘in-sourced’ all the dialogue mixing to our colleagues in Foster City, USA whilst I focused on the music and effects mix at our new Cambridge-based recording studio. I kept a close eye on continuity issues to avoid any jarring between in-game and cut scene sound – whether ambiences or relative levels or even matching FMOD’s surround positioning. Some cut scenes are very small segments replayed within complex branching structures so we ended up using three-frame audio overhangs at the top and tail to cross-fade on – it works a treat.”

According to Colvin respected music artist Nitin Sawhney was a clear choice as composer: “We wanted someone with a genuine grounding in Eastern culture who was equally at home with contemporary or classical forms, as well as being completely comfortable with the project’s technological setting. With his eclectic talents, Nitin was perfect and enjoyed the opportunity to create for a wide-ranging and diverse set of requirements.

“In-game, we work a lot with his mix stems (e.g. perc, strings, woodwind) bringing them together in response to game events and status. Several factors (e.g. threat level) are weighted and combined to determine the exact music replay – but it isn’t just a universal ‘cross-fade, catch-all’ approach. We make the engine observe the music forms to allow (say) long emotionally-charged vocal phrases to play out properly, rather than being faded out just because the game state’s changed. This allows the music flow to be maintained – it keeps the connection to the action, without compromising musical sense.”

Taylor and Colvin undertook an overall mixing phase during the development’s final stages, again deploying SCEE’s studio as the objective listening environment and using Ninja’s powerful run-time mixing tools. Explains Colvin: “We have the virtual equivalent of a ‘flying faders’ film mixing console with extensive hierarchical grouping and scene snapshots. ‘Live’ editing of audio at this stage is absolutely essential – not just volumes, but proximities, frequency fall-off – even the listener position…”

Taylor continues: “…and also not being afraid to strip things back if necessary. Sometimes when you stand back and take in the overall sound picture, you think - does that really need to be there? Never distract the player’s focus! The machine’s so powerful now – capable of handling so much audio, which is great – but as we all know when you’re mixing, sometimes ‘less is more’.”

 

[djtortilla]

id rather take 10GB of gameplay versus sound FX

 

[Barnolde]

id rather take 10GB of gameplay versus sound FX

 

[Snah]

id rather take 10GB of gameplay versus sound FX

I'd rather have as much content as they can physically fit onto a single disc. Luckily blu-ray provides for 50 GB so we don't have to be limited in any one area.

The audio of heavenly sword is spectacular. The music is just amazing. The voice acting is some of the best ever seen in a game. I wouldn't want it to be compromised.

 

[tribal24]

i rather take everything not just gameplay sigh

 

[Thunderbear]

id rather take 10GB of gameplay versus sound FX

What an incredibly weak troll.

 

[theBishop]

id rather take 10GB of gameplay versus sound FX

You'll have to buy that through microtransactions.

 

[djtortilla]

What an incredibly weak troll.

im hardly trolling.


im looking forward to this game like every other ps3 owner.


I would rather like to hear something like "10GB of textures or level data" was included for the game rather than 10GB of audio, assuming its easy to get that amount of audio by using an uncompressed soundtrack

 

[chubigans]

I would rather like to hear something like "10GB of textures or level data" was included for the game rather than 10GB of audio, assuming its easy to get that amount of audio by using an uncompressed soundtrack

There's 15GBs left assuming they went with a single layer BD. What else would be on there?

 

[DieH@rd]

Spoiler

3.5 hrs of music?? Well at least, now we know that game will be longer that that


cant wait!

 

[Lord Error]

I would rather like to hear something like "10GB of textures or level data" was included for the game rather than 10GB of audio, assuming its easy to get that amount of audio by using an uncompressed soundtrack

But then someone else would complain that it's impossible they have 10GB of textures or level data and that they must be lazy and not compressing those textures! :lol

There's no question that those extra voiceover languages are inflating the audio file size, but it's an interview specifically about audio, so shouldn't we just enjoy that they are doing a great job with it? The rest of the disc will be used as well, they've already said the game is filling one 25GB disc completely.

 

[Thunderbear]

im hardly trolling.


im looking forward to this game like every other ps3 owner.


I would rather like to hear something like "10GB of textures or level data" was included for the game rather than 10GB of audio, assuming its easy to get that amount of audio by using an uncompressed soundtrack

But that article was about sound, it has no impact on gameplay. Bluray discs have more than enough capacity to fit 10GB of audio and all the rest.

Audio always take up a significant amount of data.

I just don't see why you would say I wish they spent it on gameplay, when the article was just talking about the sound.

 

[Zen]

Remember that time that Speevy said there was probably more dialog in that bar in Mass Effect then the entirety of Heavenly Sword. :lol

 

[Mau ®]

Maybe he was telling the truth after all:

First the PSM3 cover and now this!

Damn Nariko is the Lara Croft.