My Review Of The Sound In Battlefield 1

Hello to all!
Recently, Battlefield 1 was released for Xbox, PS4 and PC and I personally cannot stop playing it. However when I am playing it, I always love how the game sounds and am shocked at how the audio department at DICE have captured the ambience of WW1 extremely well. With the release being a AAA game, you are expecting to find close to zero faults in everything. This is definitely the case when it comes to Battlefield 1 as the audio has been created so well there are virtually no errors in the world when it comes to immersion and the feel of grittiness of WW1.

With the amount of time I have put into the game I can write for an extreme amount of pages for the audio and how great it all is. However I dont want to bore you all with my ramblings. I had a gaming session with the game whilst wearing a pair of Tritton 5.1 headphones which are designed for gaming, and I took notes during this session. Below is an excerpt of what I have written about the audio for that particular session.

Session Notes

Main Menu UI sound is very minimalist and music driven which works well for the game having it be calm before the storm of WW1 arrives. When war stories is selected from the menu a nice whooshing sound is emitted that is mixed below the music and gives a nice rumble to feel like you are flying towards the stories.

War stories 1:

Low rumbles to add effect of story when each text box shows up.

Great ambience transitioning from outside to inside big bess (Tank). The sound of the inside of the tank has been well captured as to what it would sound like inside a tank in battle.

Extremely effective use of reverb when inside vehicles. When the camera view is outside the tank, you can still hear everything that is going on inside big bess. This is well translated with the use of reverb as they have made it so the cannon and gunshots sound like you are inside the tank shooting them but also have a hint of reverb from the impacts on the outside of the tank. This is possibly to give the sense of extreme realism which works very effectively to make it seem that you are there shooting the tank. When you zoom with the tank you are able to hear the differences between the outside view and the aiming view of the tank. When you are zoomed in with the tank you can hear the reverb of inside the tank clearly. The environment is also mixed to this reverb making it even more immersing being inside the tank.

When you are on foot, the use of attenuation is accurately represented with the distance you will be able to hear an enemy from. You are able to easily pinpoint enemies just by listening for footsteps or voice lines that are randomly triggered whenever you are close by. When sound designers are making sounds they have to make sure they replicate what the sound of a certain action should be without this sound being overused and becoming repetitive. This is always a hindrance when it comes to implementing sound. This is why when you are designing sounds you must make multiple of the same actions of sound, but make them sound different. This is so you have variation when you are implementing the sound into the game. The sound designers have done this with multiple surfaces and objects to make it so impact noises are correct and consistently random. These sounds are sometimes placed into more less important areas where no one would usually go and put the most suitable sound there. You are able to tell the difference if you are that specific with your audio. However in a game where everything is run and gun most of the time you don't tend to look into these tiny bits of detail that are done for time constrained circumstances.

That is just a small excerpt of notes from a session of gaming on Battlefield 1. The sound designers have done an excellent job at representing the feel of WW1 and I cannot think how I can do it any better than they already have done. There has been a podcast with lead sound designer Andreas Almstrom and audio director Bence Pajor from EA DICE in Stockholm talking about everything they did to get the sound of Battlefield 1 to be as great as it is. Check it out below and thank you for your time here on my audioventure!




Stick around for more posts soon!