Dying Light 2: Stay Human has been touted by developer-and-publisher Techland to feature an incredibly advanced and carefully planned out sound design. That level of audio immersion will however become even more special on PlayStation 5 when its new Tempest 3D AudioTech engine comes into play.
Speaking with SegmentNext in a recent interview, senior sound designer Wojciech Siadak refrained from giving too many details when asked about the sound enhancements the Tempest engine will bring in Dying Light 2 on PS5 compared to the previous-generation PS4 version.
Siadak did mention “how much is changing in the field of 3D audio” and as such, may have as well teased how PS5 players can expect the Tempest engine to completely “change in-game perception” in Dying Light 2: Stay Human with high levels of audio immersion for “even better positioning in the panorama.”
Unfortunately, Techland will wait for production to conclude before revealing any particular details regarding the PS5 sound design of Dying Light 2.
“We are observing and testing these technologies [Tempest 3D AudioTech], but these plans are for the later stages of production,” said Siadak. “So I can’t spoil any details for you now.”
A few months back, composer Olivier Derivière teased that the manner in which Techland has been making use of the new PS5 3D audio engine for Dying Light 2: Stay Human is “very exciting.” The same notion has also been shared by rendering director Tomek Szałkowski who teased that the sequel will explore “new audio possibilities” on PS5.
Techland had always planned Dying Light 2: Stay Human to feature a “much more advanced audio than before.” Siadak explained that the goal was to enable each audio layer to be as interactive as possible and to be able to follow in-game player-progression to dynamically set the mood and tone of different situations.
“For this reason, we decided to use probably the most advanced audio middleware at the moment: Wwise by Audiokinetic,” said Siadak. “It is an amazing tool that receives information about the events happening at any given moment and all possible parameters from the game.”
The soundtracks for the campaign and the parkour were hence treated separately to make sure that they react instinctively with in-game events. According to Szymon Strauss:
“We tackled the Quest adventure layer in a very custom manner to make sure it fits the story. At the same time, we came up with a groundbreaking feature set which allows us to handle parkour traversal dynamically depending on player actions.”
Dying Light 2: Stay Human features more than “1,500 screams and breaths alone.” That does not even count additional sound effects added in layers to most of them. The overall sound design ensures that most of the sounds are completely new and made from scratch, but fans of the original installment will be glad to know that Techland “could not resist leaving the iconic sounds from Dying Light 1 as individual sound effects or as one of the layers in new effects.”
Dying Light 2: Stay Human will see the light of day on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC on December 7, 2021.
