SOUNDS OF RAPTURE

Many of you have asked for some sound bites taken from Rapture, and today, you get your first taste. Masterminded by the sound gurus of Irrational, these clips were constructed by Emily Ridgway, Audio Designer, Patrick Balthrop and Justin Mullins, Sound Assistants, Carlos Cuello, Audio Programmer, and Eric Brosius, Sound Contractor.

These first snippets come from the Gene Banks scattered around the city.

Gene Bank entrance sound
Gene Bank idle sound one
Gene Bank idle sound two
Gene Bank idle sound three
Gene Bank exit sound

Next, you hear two small excerpts from battles. The first is with a Splicer from Rapture, the second, a Big Daddy going up against a Splicer. I recommend you listen to this full blast, in surround, with the lights off.

Houdini battle
Big Daddy battle

Finally, here is a Q&A with Emily and Patrick, about their work on the sounds of Rapture.

Q&A WITH EMILY AND PATRICK

EM: I think everyone here has touched BioShock audio at some point. People like to touch it. They can't help it. It feels good. They know it's wrong and yet they're drawn to it like a moth to a flame.

It's mostly myself and Patrick Balthrop that do all the touching. And by touching I mean creating delicious lush audio experiences. If this were The Matrix, Patrick and I would be the Architects and everybody else would be like little Neo's running around inside trying to break things.

Other people who like to give special loves to the BioShock audio include, Justin Mullins - sound assistant in Australia, Keith (The) Shetler - audio integration support, Carlos Cuello - Audio Programmer, Justin Sonnekalb and Tim Crosby - localization and asset management, and then there's Alyssa Finley who keeps us all in time.

There is of course the Eric Brosius (System Shock 2, Thief, Guitar Hero, Guitar Hero 2) who contracts with us, as well as the might and power of Dsonic and their army. And also the genius of Garry Schyman, who is the composer behind the original orchestral pieces.

Out of all the departments at Irrational I'd have to say that the audio department is the probably the best looking. We're all pretty hot, so we have that going for us.

EM: System Shock 2 was a strong inspiration with it’s use of dissonance and tones in the ambient bed. It’s relentless psychological effect on players was a huge contributor to the cult success of SS2, and that’s definitely something we wanted to replicate in BioShock.

Also, do you remember the movie Return to Oz? It was the movie sequel to the Wizard of Oz and it was made in 1985.

I saw this when I was 5 or 6 and I never forgot it. It was scary and art deco, and it was done in a very antique rusty steam-punky kind of way. If I can make someone feel like how I felt watching ‘Return to Oz’ as a five year old, then awesome. We have weird sounds and you don't know what they are, but don’t expect your typical "scary movie" synth/string pads. Our ambience definitely has a connection to the real world and also, hopefully, evokes an emotional reaction from the player.

EM: One time I stood in the middle of a supermarket trying to record the PA "chunks" at the start and end of the announcements so we could use those at the beginning and end of announcements for BioShock. Security was alerted after 10 minutes. I was impressed.

I also remember Patrick running around our car park building one rainy day trying to capture every single possible kind of water drips, pouring, waterfall sounds he could without getting wet.

When we're not doing that, we're doing crazy awesome things in Sound Forge, Ableton Live, Protools, Acid and Microsoft Word.

EM: Pat, tell everyone how you made the Gene Bank sounds.

PAT: We've talked about this Ridgway.

EM: Tell me again. It's my favorite story.

PAT: Ok. Fine. We researched old like carnival songs. We found some that were in the public domain and we used those as a reference. Then we made an old detuned piano sound and then we emulated the old carnival tunes in that style. Then we downsampled those files.

EM: That was to make them sound old right?

PAT: No. That was because programmers get all crazy eyes on us otherwise.

EM: Oh yeah.

EM: The security bot sounds were insanely complicated from an implementation standpoint. There is a sound for the blades moving through the air, there is a sound for the motor that seamlessly winds-up, loops, and ends in all the right places. Said motor sounds also dynamically pitch bend depending on how hard the bot is accelerating.

There are also revving motor sounds that play before the bot starts accelerating. There are also wind-up, loop and trail off sounds for it's machine gun. There is another sound for the shell casings falling on the floor. It also says special bleeps for when it kills a target, bleeps for when it acquires a new target, and even some bleeps for when the security bot is bored and doesn't have anything to do.

It has sounds for banging into things while it's flying. It has sounds for when the security bot is half damaged, quarter damaged, and dead. It has a sound to let you know if you can hack it or not. And also, all of the above sounds change depending on if the security bot is friendly to you or not.

We don't expect people to be able to hear all that all the time, but for us each little touch seems to make the world that much more believable.

EM: The first time I listened to BioShock cranked up on a 5.1 surround sound system with the lights off.