There’s an enemy in Returnal’s early hours that can be a particular nuisance for most players just starting Housemarque and Sony’s masterful sci-fi shooter. None of Returnal’s enemies should really be trifled with, but this flying enemy, dubbed Lamiadon, can be especially irritating, as players (and the game’s protagonist, stranded astronaut Selene) are still trying to gain their bearings on the strange alien planet of Atropos. Lamiadon likes to attack in packs and surround the player, dive bombing one by one until Selene falls and her endless nightmare begins anew. What makes the attack so difficult to avoid is that it often comes from somewhere offscreen, out of the player’s field of vision. Lamiadon does have a tell though – one that relies on and demonstrates Returnal’s phenomenal sound design. Every time this beast rears back to attack, not only does it glow bright orange (which you can’t see if you’re not looking at it) but it also emits a high-pitched shriek, warning the player a second before the attack arrives.
Sony has made a lot of noise (pun absolutely intended) about the PlayStation 5’s proprietary Tempest 3D AudioTech, but the best endorsement of what this technology can do is embodied in that pesky flying bat beast that has ruined many a player’s run through Returnal. With 3D Audio, not only can you hear that telltale shriek before Lamiadon attacks, but you can also hear what direction it’s coming from and even get a sense of how far away it might be. In speaking with Loic Couthier, the game’s audio lead and supervising sound designer at PlayStation Studios, I get the sense that this was all part of the design of Returnal, where every aspect of gameplay is deliberately interwoven to create a challenging but fair experience.
“With Returnal, what we wanted to do was to help the players a lot with sound cues,” he explains. “Because the battlefield is three-dimensional, it’s all around you, the enemies are all around you, enemies can come close to you and melee you from behind. 3D Audio helps a lot with that because you’re going to be able to subconsciously turn right 45 degrees and hit with your sword because you heard that enemy was there.” That is exactly what happens after many hours and deaths in Returnal – players begin to subconsciously learn all the different cues the game gives them to help survive this hostile extraterrestrial world.
For many gamers, 3D Audio may seem like just another buzzword that Sony is using to sell their latest PlayStation console, but for those who have experienced games that take full advantage of the technology, it’s clear that the advancements in sound design can be just as impactful as solid-state drives, haptic feedback, and adaptive triggers. Couthier describes it with a familiar term. “It feels more high-definition,” he says. “You have more definition in the sound, more quality in the sound in general, and more spatial definition.”
Prior to Returnal, Housemarque had only released two-dimensional games where, by and large, the threats on screen were the only threats you needed to worry about, so the game only needed to speak to the player visually. Whereas in a 3D environment, as Couthier explains, “The screen is [a fraction] of what’s actually around you, so sound covers a massive part of that space.” That space that you can’t see is what makes good audio design, not just bells and whistles, but a pivotal aspect of good game design as well. Without the spatial definition of 3D Audio and the resulting sound cues, an enemy like Lamiadon might have been too difficult to make the final cut.
That extra definition is what seems to set 3D Audio apart from the rest of the field. The technology uses true binaural audio, which is a relatively new recording technique that emulates the way human ears work in order to more accurately convey subtle sounds like whispers or footsteps. In one of Returnal’s more frightening moments, Selene is exploring her childhood home (which mysteriously manifests on this planet seemingly light-years away from Earth). These moments are a break from the traditional bullet-hell, roguelike gameplay of Returnal and more closely resemble something like Konami’s playable horror demo, PT. In this particular moment, as tension slowly builds, the player suddenly hears footsteps in the upper floor of the otherwise empty house. Without the high-definition audio, this moment would lose most of its impact.
Couthier sees 3D Audio as “a paradigm shift” in the way sound is designed for games. “There’s a lot to learn for everyone involved, from the design team to the engineers,” he explains. “It involves using new technologies such as audio objects, [sound that is] object based as opposed to channel based.” He describes 3D Audio as “a virtual sphere in 3D where sounds live in that space.”
What this means is that, as opposed to coming from seven or eight different channels of sound (for example, different surround-sound speakers), each sound is coming directly from objects in the game space itself. The resulting effect is that when you’re playing a game like Returnal, you can hear that sphere of sound all around you, engulfing you further into the game world, especially on a pair of headphones like Sony’s Pulse 3D wireless headset. It’s worth noting that 3D Audio is specially designed for use on any pair of headphones and even television speakers since object-based audio only requires two channels of output (i.e. left ear and right ear). Couthier says 3D Audio allows sound designers “to give the user a lot of tools to accommodate any situation they’re playing with.”
The challenge for Sony is getting the audience and developers to fully embrace the potential of 3D Audio. It’s a familiar challenge for Couthier, whose team not only oversees audio design but also haptic feedback with the DualSense controller – another PS5 feature that often feels underutilized. Couthier and the team at PlayStation work with first-party and third-party studios to make sure the relatively new audio technology is an asset to their production rather than a burden.
The guidance is welcome because unlike traditional 7.1 surround sound, which most audio designers are familiar with, binaural audio is a completely new way of designing sound inside a game. “It’s a lot to learn for anyone new to this,” says Couthier. “A lot of people who don’t come from recent university probably never heard of it in their education … so they would have to learn on the fly. I think that’s part of the job anyway in video games – there’s always something new to learn.”
In the future, Couthier hopes to see more games utilizing audio as a function of design. “What’s going to make a real difference is trying to have 3D Audio being really part of the gameplay,” he says. “You can do things with just sound and maybe have game experiences that use sound as a real feature. It becomes possible now because you have this level of definition. I think the next level in sound is … trying to think about feeling free to rely on the sound being out of the picture.” He speaks like a game designer, pontificating about wild ideas with boundless creativity. He sees games like Returnal as only a fraction of what’s possible. “There is a lot of potential that has not been truly explored yet.”
With an entire console generation ahead of us and the upcoming PlayStation VR 2, the promise of games reaching the full potential of 3D Audio is truly exciting. Having experienced a fraction of the technology’s capabilities with Returnal and other recent PS5 games, it’s easy to see that the ceiling is much higher than we might have previously imagined. Sony is betting big on the future of 3D Audio. Hopefully it pays off.
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