Behind the Sounds: Game Audio Deconstructed – Crimson Desert
A Case Study in Audio Design: Why Real-World Sounds Can Be Your Best Friends
If you’ve watched my other videos, you know the deal: I’m not here to reinvent the wheel. I’m taking a sound from a game, dissecting it, and putting it back together. The goal is to train my ears and get a sense of what other designers are thinking. It’s a reality check in a way—forcing me to use approaches and source material I’d otherwise ignore.
For this exercise, I’m referencing an ability from the game Crimson Desert. The mix of sounds are deceptively straightforward. It’s got a decent number of layers and there’s a sense that some sounds are jostling with each other for attention. I’m not sure about the processing but I’m going to keep it light and manageable. There’s a brilliant design here and a strong creative ethos at the heart of it all. And that’s what makes this a useful study.
Behind the Scenes: The Layers and the Takeaway
When I broke down the sound, the first thing that hit me was how grounded it felt. My first instinct would have been to use a bunch of abstract, “magical” synth layers for a fantasy ability, but the original designers seemed to have used real-world sounds with not a whole lot of processing to obfuscate the source material.
- The Jump: It was built from leather and synthetic jacket sounds. I used an automated low pass filter to keep the high-end from getting too spitty.
- The Impact Explosion: This was the real eye-opener. The mix is dense, but the bass is expertly managed. My initial thought was to use some weird, over-processed percussion, but when I listened closely, I found the real answer: cannonball sources. This is a great example of an aggressive sound choice that makes the loudness processing easier, as the clipping artifacts get masked by the music itself. It gives the ability cast a grounded, weighty feel that synth-based sounds just can’t replicate.
- The Vocal Grunt and Whooshes: The vocal is treated with some distortion and chorus to give it a bit of width and to help it sit in the mix, not stand out. The whooshes use some subtle white noise and are just loud enough to fill in the gaps without drawing too much attention.
- The Glide Start: This section was honestly bizarre, and a perfect example of why this exercise is so valuable. My ears picked up what sounded like wood and glass debris, along with a creature roar. I used a pitched-down baboon because why not? It makes no sense on paper, but in the context of the mix, it works and gives the design a story. Perhaps tells you something about the character you’re playing?
The lesson here is simple: if you want a sound to feel grounded, pick sources that don’t need a tonne of processing to achieve the effect you want. It’s a valuable lesson in production and a powerful reminder to not always rely on your first instinct. This is certainly a style I would try to emulate, it’s an excellent reference for how to leverage real-world sounds for maximum effect.
