DICE on Bad Company 2's sound: "We really nailed it"

Swedish developer DICE has been working on the Battlefield series for around a decade now, and if there's one thing that the team has kept at a consistently high level in each game it's audio. Clearly we're not the only ones who think that; Battlefield: Bad Company 2 picked up a BAFTA for Use of Audio last month. How do DICE manage to stand out from the pack when it comes to assaulting your ears? We asked two members of the team, Patrick Bach and David Goldfarb.



"We've worked really hard on what comes after the shot," Bach stated. "It rings out and it clings in the world, and we worked hard on putting the player in the world. So if you're in a forest or an urban environment, that's what you hear.

"It's not only the shot, it's what comes afterwards. That's something that we really, really managed to nail with this product; it's an immersive world that you're part of and you can tell which environment you're in. I think those are subtle queues for the player and they really put you there. That's only one part of the game of course; there's so many different parts to these games but that was one bit we really nailed I think."

Goldfarb added: "It's also about making it sound good when you play it on a TV, you don't have to play it back on a super-loud volume or in a cinema. We made it sound loud and tense even when pulling back on the volume and I think that's something that's key to the sound as well because that's the way most consumers are going to experience the game."

Well we know for sure that DICE will keep standards high for this year's Battlefield 3, due for release at Christmas.