Guild Wars 2 Q&A

Ten Ton Hammer is offering up a three-page Q&A with ArenaNet chief art director Daniel Dociu about the challenges involved with creating artwork for a project as large as Guild Wars 2, as well as the artistic vision they have for the final product.

Ten Ton Hammer: About the cinematography team’s work, the music and sound that we hear in the trailers, is that culled directly from the game? Could you tell us about the link between the music, sound effects, and the art that you’re designing?

Daniel: Yes the music that you heard in the cinematics is written for Guild Wars 2, and of course, has been edited to match the duration of the different shots and so on has been synced up with the visuals so it took a little bit of massaging up the raw materials that were used the original score for Guild Wars 2. The sound effects also have been pretty much written from or recorded and processed from scratch.

And, it’s a new team that we’re working with, very talented sound designers and engineers, and a completely revamped process on the sound front as well. We work very closely with the sound guys every time we have an interesting location prototyped, they are amongst the first to see it, and we just bring them over and say, hey, just so you can get a bit of foreshadowing of what is to come, take a look at this, and soak it in and think about what kind of sound effects would it take to bring this world to life. We like to give them time to soak it in; for them to familiarize themselves with the mood and the feel of the different locations and then go out and record and process sounds specifically or these locations.

I personally believe that sound is an absolutely crucial layer to making these worlds credible and rich and vivid. When I conceive of an environment myself or when I think about new locations, I always think in terms of sound what kind of ambient sounds can I picture filling the air?

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