For this Inside the Studio, we sat down with Audio Director Lydia Andrew, who shared the secrets behind the sounds in Assassin's Creed® Odyssey.
Lydia reveals how audio is its own immersive storytelling, and describes the journey it took to recreate sounds from 2,500 years ago.
You can read some of her answers below or hear even more in our full audio interview!
You can also find this episode on iTunes.
Could you tell us a little bit about being the audio director on Assassin's Creed Odyssey and what your role is, day-to-day?
One of the things that I've been really involved in with this game is the casting and the speech. Speech for Odyssey is a huge part of the experience because choice is at the center of the game. The script, the performances, how that's integrated, how the player experiences voices is super important to everyone on the team.
I'm also very involved with music, and the direction of music and all sound on the project. We really focus on the emotion of the game, the pace, and the sensation we're trying to give you.
Where did you draw your inspirations from when creating audio for Assassin's Creed Odyssey?
For Assassin's Creed Odyssey, we've gone further back in time than ever before in Assassin's. So that was both a challenge and a huge adventure for us because where do you do your research? For example, the last project I was working on – Assassin's Creed Syndicate – we could go and look up what pieces of music were heard in the world at the time. We could get the lyrics of the songs from the late 1800s.
But for this game, there's one stone column in Greece with a piece of music notation on it and that's all that exists from that time period. Everything was researched. We were working really closely with an in house historian and very closely with outside specialists – for example, people who helped us translate the speech into Ancient Greek or people who were specialists in Greek music. And then, we did a lot of research for things like the boats.
For example, we wanted to do some recordings to recreate these ancient wooden boats, but most boats now are built out of metal or fiberglass. They might have wood, but it's not the only material. In trying to recreate that, we did a lot of recording of foley work, we used our sound effects libraries, but we also went on a recreated 16th-century galleon, which was in Quebec City for a sailing festival. That boat was built of wood and so it gave us the opportunity to record what a wooden boat sounds like, and how it moves through the water. Even though we couldn't record an ancient Greek trireme, it was a good close thing for us.
"Those moments of research [...] allowed us to build up all these layers and form this great picture."
The same with the sounds of the world. I was very lucky that I went on a research trip with some other people from the studio. I took a Zoom recorder with me and I would walk through the ancient olive groves, or walk around the ruins of the area we were in, or go down by the water in a bay where there was no one else. And even though those sounds may not be all the sounds we used in the game, they gave us an inspiration for simple things, like the amount of bees that you can hear in the environment. Everywhere we went, because there are so many wildflowers, we were hearing bees buzzing between the flowers. It kind of sounded like someone was mowing their lawn in the distance all the time.
It gave us that little hook, that inspiration. Those moments of research – of being in that environment, or researching online, or listening to things that were created in those places – allowed us to build up all these layers and form this great picture.
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And the audio is really there to enrich the reality of the world the player is in.
We're trying to do a lot of different things. We really want to support the reality. I'm on my horse and I'm riding through this environment, and I'm riding across these kinds of textures, and then an animal, a wolf, comes out of the night and attacks me. We're trying to support all of that – the reality, the action, and the reaction of what you're experiencing.
With all of the sound, we're trying to support the pace, the rhythm of the gameplay, and also the emotion that you're experiencing.
"Sound is there and it's supporting all of your actions and helping tell the story."
The magic of it is that unless you take a step back and listen attentively, you might not notice all of these details as a player because you are so fully immersed in the world.
I really hope people are fully immersed. I really hope that what we're doing is giving them this very rich, deep experience that they can lose themselves in, that they can engage with in a way that it feels very seamless for them. Maybe something actually does sound very different for a moment, but it's right in that context. It's a constant kind of wave of moving up and down and making things feel alive and not having too many repetitions. Sometimes, people say, with sound, that you don't really notice it, but actually, it's surrounding you. Sound is there and it's supporting all of your actions and helping tell the story. That's what we're trying to achieve, and I hope that's what people experience when they play the game.
I'm looking forward to closing my eyes and listening to everything you've created.
Yeah, I would say, if you want to just chill out, go and swim underwater with the dolphins and the whales and listen to the boats going over your head. Climb up a mountain, look at the environment, hear the music. It's a game with that kind of range – very intense, very emotional, and very exciting experiences. Certainly, being out on the water, being underwater, being high up on a mountain, they're very different experiences and the sound is part of that.
We hope you enjoyed reading or listening to our interview with Lydia Andrew, and check out our previous interview with Creative Director Jonathan Dumont! We'd love to hear your thoughts – whether it's about topics or guests you'd like for us to explore down the road. Join the discussion with our community on the official forums or reach us on Twitter with #ACInsidetheStudio.
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