We’re always happy at Demute, when we can lend our services to our local game development studios, so we were thrilled when we were asked to collaborate on Appeal’s Gangs of Sherwood. We asked to have our lead sound designer interviewed to share some insights.

In the realm of video game development, audio design plays a pivotal role in creating an immersive and captivating experience for players. Walter Fiorini, our seasoned sound designer with a technical edge, has lent his expertise to a diverse array of games, including titles like Ary and the Secret of Seasons, Flotsam, and the vibrant VR adventure, Star Shaman.

When Appeal was looking for help with the audio for Gangs of Sherwood, Walter was the obvious choice. His journey with the studio started with projects like Who Wants to Be a Billionaire and Fort Boyard, allowing him to witness Appeal's growth first-hand, seeing new faces join the team, and celebrating the collaborative effort that brought their visions to life.

Gangs of Sherwood is his biggest project so far. It’s a futuristic dystopian version of the classic tale of Robin Hood, now in the public domain.  A game born from a passion for storytelling and innovative gameplay. The concept originated at Appeal and NACON stepped in to help with the funding.

A Symphony of Sound for Gangs of Sherwood

As the Audio Lead on the project, Walter's role extended beyond traditional sound design. He curated every auditory element that would accompany players on their journey through Sherwood. This encompassed everything from effects, background music, to the intricate realm of voice acting. The casting process, Walter attests, was a delicate dance to find actors whose voices not only matched their characters but also were readily available in Belgium.

Gangs of Sherwood presented its own set of challenges, one of them being the absence of middleware tools such as Wwise or Fmod. Everything had to be implemented, directed into Unreal Engine. While this proved to be stressful and cause for concern at first, it wasn’t an impossible struggle to overcome and in the end, limitations can breed innovation.

A Touch of DIY: Bringing Sherwood's Voices to Life

In a delightful twist of fate, Walter and his colleague Renaud found themselves in a studio, donning the hats of the Merry Men themselves. With a mission to fine-tune the voice recordings and establish a seamless workflow, they spent days locked up in the studio and immersing themselves in the game's script to provide placeholder voices until the voice casting was finalized.

They had a lot of fun and kept laughing about it since their acting was kind of terrible. Everyone was relieved when they finally added the professionally acted recordings in the game, but at the same time they were so used to hearing their own voices in iconic moments of the game that they still remember those moments in great detail. With Walter's beautiful Italian accent doing the placeholder introduction cutscene by Alan 'A Dale as a specific and hilarious example.

You can have a listen at the professional voice performance by Lenny Mark Irons as Alan 'A Dale in the trailer below:

Hyperrealism: Elevating the Audio Experience

One distinctive in games like this, is the concept of hyperrealism. This technique involves elevating sounds to be larger-than-life, creating an auditory experience that transcends reality. It's the art of making a sword's unsheathing sound more dramatic than it would in reality, reminding us that sometimes, real life can be boring. (and that’s why we play games)

"We spent a considerable amount of time to find a sound palette for each material and then processed them to perfection."

In Gangs of Sherwood materials can be transmuted, which called for research and experimentation on how silver and gold, for instance, resonated in reality. How does the clink of silver coins differ from the subtle shimmer of gold? How can these nuances be recreated through sound?

This journey involved a deep dive into the properties of various materials, dissecting their sonic signatures and understanding how they interact in the game's world. "We spent a considerable amount of time to find a sound palette for each material," Walter notes, "and then processed them to perfection."

 With Walter’s journey through the soundscapes of Gangs of Sherwood, we wanted to kickstart this blog series where we ask our audio engineers about the intricate process of crafting audio for video games. From the challenges of working without middleware to the joy of seeing a project evolve, it shows how Demute is dedicated to breathing life into videogames and acts as a reminder that every swish of a sword or creak of a door is meticulously crafted to enhance your gaming adventures.

Here's one more epic trailer to enjoy:

‍

‍