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Audio Arts - Wk 2 – Game Audio Analysis

Grand Theft Auto – Vice City:


My personal favourite of the GTA series, due in no small way to my shameless nostalgic attachment to all things V-Rock in the eighties, gets the sound analysis it so rightly deserves this week…


Boot and load:


Developer’s Logo fades onto screen accompanied by deeply reverberated woman’s monophonic and shortly sustained vocal note. Low synth note fades in subsequently. Chattering of a crowd murmurs through and all sound crossfades into a transistor radio recording of the eighties hit ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’. The screen cuts to an emulation of a Commodore 64 computer screen. The sound of someone typing in a familiar C-64 load command is heard. The command is executed and a cheesy square-wave synth melody plays over another display of the developer’s logo.


Title sequence:


Eighties disco music then kicks in for the opening credits and title sequence. Deliberately synthesised instrumentation characterises the composition. It then cuts to a silent loading screen and the player waits patiently for a progress bar to fill up, indicating that the game has finished loading.


Title screen:

This game does not have a ‘title screen’ as such.


Interface:

Occasional buzzing of controller vibration.


Game in sequence:


This game begins with a short film outlining the beginnings of the characters story, laying the groundwork for future action. It begins in a seedy Mafia den, where gangsters discuss the players character, Tony Vercetti’s, release from prison and decide to put him to work. Dialogue, the soundtrack of another eighties pop hit ‘Take these broken wings’ and the footsteps and clinking of a servant serving drinks are the only audio evident.

Upon cutting to the next scene, some generic Cuban music accompanies the sound of Toni’s aeroplane landing in vice city. Ken the nervous lawyer is waiting to pick them up. Car doors open and close and Toni and his boys get in. Ken the lawyer is talking nervously the whole time.

Sound of an approaching chopper is then accompanied by an ambient synth soundtrack as the scene is set for Toni’s first drug deal.


The next set of sounds heard is as follows:

Noise of chopper is prevalent the whole time.
Car doors open.
Ken is still talking.
Sound of footsteps.
Crouching of hidden soldiers.
Toni’s and drug dealers voices.
Gunfire.
Burnout of Ken’s car as he escapes with Toni in the back.
Chopper takes off.


Game play (action, narratives, interludes, pause) outro:

The next scene flows seamlessly into the actual gameplay. The audio sequence and introduced environment sounds are thus:

Ken still talking.
Car Screeching to a halt.
Toni and Kens short parting conversation.
Bleeps for game instructions then begin.
Environment then kicks in.
Car engine still running.
Car horns beeping.
Pedestrians talking.
Cars passing.
Rain falling.
Birds chirping when rain stops.


Audio types - music, environments, dialogue, narration, sound effects, foley, action sounds:


The collection of sound files for GTA’s in game action is enormous but an abbreviated list should outline the core elements.


Music:

All of the in game music comes from ‘source’ in GTA. The player chooses radio stations when driving cars. Background music may be heard in certain environmental scenarios such as the shopping mall. There is no constant non-diegetic ‘soundtrack’, such as that which can be heard for the duration of many other games.


Environmental sounds:

Some have already been listed in relation to the outdoor suburban environment portrayed in GTA. There are also subtle changes to the background hum when the player moves away from the city to indoor or remote environments. One example of this is the above mentioned shopping mall, in which the background noise (and foreground) is sharply reverberated to enhance the realism of an indoor space with many ‘live’ surfaces.


Dialogue:

GTA is littered with dialogue all the way through, from pedestrians to associates of the character on the street making idle chatter, to Toni’s phone conversations and taunting of victims during the execution of ‘mission’ duties.


Narration:

The only evidence of narration is Tony occasionally talking to himself.


Sound effects:

For a violent action RPG, the usual suspects are here – Weapon sounds, explosions, car and car crash sounds, helicopters, boats etc. All sound effects can be attributed to ‘real world’ scenarios, so the sound designers have not had to create sound for concepts that do not exist such as laser guns or alien space ships.


Foley:

A comprehensive foley exists for GTA, from standard footsteps and character shuffling to various surface contact effects such as the sound of brushing when Tony runs too close to a hedge. Object sounds are plentiful with most sonic reactions from a given action accounted for. The clicking sounds of car doors opening and shutting and a weapon being reloaded is one example.


Reference:

Haines, Christian. ‘Audio Arts - Wk 2 – Game Audio Analysis.’ Lecture presented in Tutorial Room 408, Level 4 Schultz building, University of Adelaide. 31st July, 2007.

posted by David J Dowling @ 12:54 PM