Home

As of now we have covered a lot of topics on the blog already. And yes, we know that we owe you still an update for the combat system. And this one will take some more time as we’d like to stay in time and therefore need to continue working. And you may understand that in a turn based RPG especially the combat system is of great importance. And it still needs some time before we are convinced that what we have to show won’t disappoint you. Having said that, let’s have a look on the sound design.

It’s an obvious thing: Atmosphere is not only created by graphics or by gameplay but by so many factors, it’s hard to even count them. Atmosphere is what you have if you put everything together and everything fits. And one of the most important things to create a deep atmosphere is the sound design.  Think about it: What would an RPG be without epic combat themes, an epic main theme? But not only the music is of importance. The details make the difference.

But what are details? Let’s talk about one. If you look back at games like the Realms of Arkania series you’ll find a lot of details which nowadays aren’t used anymore, which is a shame. For example have look at the inventory. When you did put some new leather gloves to one of your characters a little sound appeared. Over the years the sound design in this case has changed: What happens these days when you put on some new clothes? Right. A little bling bling sound can be heard. In some cases it’s more atmospheric. But often it’s just a non-saying something. That isn’t bad at all, but it doesn’t create atmosphere. Back in the days you had different sounds. Not for each item, but for different item-classes. For swords, for leather gloves, for steel gloves, for helmets. You had little sounds which told you: Alright, you just put on a heavy armor. And you knew it just by the sound.

And that’s exactly what we want to achieve in Chaos Chronicles. Sure, not every item will have it’s own sound (if we did that we could ship the game on several Blu-Ray discs just because of the massive number of sounds), but there will be a lot of small sounds for several item-classes. If you change from a dagger to a heavy sword, you’ll hear a steel-sound, the leather gloves will lead to a different sound and so on and so on.

Many people don’t realize how much impact such a little detail has on the atmosphere but once you’ve tried it, you’ll feel kinda weird if you play a modern RPG where this little detail is missing. Cause you’ll expect it to be there. We even didn’t believe our own ears and that it made such a difference. But it did. And it will.