welcome to another #Ask343 episode.

Today we're joined by the Audio Team and

they're answering your community questions

that you asked on Twitter using hashtag

Ask343 before we dive into the questions,

I'll let them introduce themselves and tell

you about what they do here at the studio.

Hey John, yeah, thanks.

It's an honor to be here.

I'm excited to answer some questions

from the community and Chase Thompson.

I'm the Lead Audio Technical Designer

on the team here and what that means

is that I do a lot of our audio

systems design and tools design.

And so you know,

similar to the sound designers,

where they are responsible

for making things sound cool.

I'm responsible for making everything

work in the game and play back

the way that it should.

Hey, I'm Joel Yarger and I'm the Music Supervisor

for Halo infinite.

I've been with the team little over two

years and previously I worked at

PlayStation on the God of War franchise,

Uncharted franchise, Last of Us,

that type of first party.

First party work.

Hi! My name is Kyle Fraser and I'm the Lead Sound Designer

here at 343 Industries.

My day-to-day responsibilities

are kind of just overseeing the

overall sound design for the game.

Also just kind of involves just a lot of

content creation for many different areas.

And you know doing my best to try to make

the game sound is best possible for you guys.

Great to have you here today,

excited to dive into some

community questions.

This question from the community

is with the new acoustic system.

Does it allow players immediately on

either side of the same wall with

no portals to hear each other's

location similar to other games?

Or does the room and portal

pathfinding completely take precedent?

Yeah, that's a great question.

Sounds on either side of a wall are

never going to be completely muted

because of the acoustic system.

It should sound natural,

so that's the whole goal of this.

Of this system is to make the audio

feel as natural as possible so

you know if a gunshot was on the

other side of the wall,

even if that wall was

completely closed off from you,

you would still hear it,

and so that's the goal of this

system is to make sure that you can.

It feels natural,

and when those sounds are in other rooms,

they'll be appropriately muffled

or turn down based on.

On how occluded or obstructed the sound is.

So if there is a portal there,

it'll be clearer an if there's not,

it'll be muffled,

but you'll still be able to hear it.

Awesome, that's super cool to hear,

and I'm glad we're taking that more

realistic approach with that audio design.

This question from Twitter is

I'm all for the direction of

the soundtrack in infinite,

but my question is,

will there be some somber emotional tracks?

Example heavy price paid,

made me feel the emotions of

betrayal or arbiter.

Thanks for that question.

The short answer is yes.

We have a lot that we haven't

been able to share yet,

but we have emotional and character

arcs that involve spoilers.

That can't wait for you to play the game,

and here the highs and

lows of the entire score,

not just what we've shared so far.

I think 2 characters that we do know

about, the Pilot and Escharum, are part of that,

so you can hear hints of of where those

characters will be going on their journey.

And musically, it's pretty wide.

And when you say highs and lows,

you mean emotional highs,

emotional emotional highs and emotional lows.

Dynamics of that.

It's not all bright,

it's just we wanted to recapture

what made early Halos feel special.

In that regard.

Gotcha, thank you for diving into that one.

I love the music so very excited to let

fans here more as they play the game.

This question is about some weapon sounds.

Will we see the classic overcharge hum?

With the plasma pistol back

for Halo Infinite,

it's really cool seeing the studio

embracing the two decades of Halo

Audio and trying to weave legacy

into the soundscape of the game.

Yeah, we kind of like initially sat down

or trying to kind of brainstorm

different sounds that we could bring

back from the original trilogy.

This was definitely kind of high on the list,

but the sound is just, you know,

it has a lot of character,

has a really strong sense Anastasia.

And so yeah,

we definitely decided to kind of

weave it into our aesthetic into our

designs now worked out really well.

It didn't feel kind of jarring.

It didn't feel forced in any manner,

and So what you kind of have is when you

charge up the fire of the plasma pistol.

Get kind of a nice satisfying like high

tech line up then before it's fully charged,

you'll get the kind of swell at

the home that goes into this home

loop and you kind of get some nice

like ********* plasma and whatnot.

But yeah, I think you guys will dig it.

It's a nice iteration on the plasma

pistol that's that is awesome to hear.

And I love how you were able to

describe it in such depth, right?

The different phases of charging

up that plasma pistol.

This next question from Twitter is will

enemies shooting at your friendlies

still be loud for you or is it just the

thing when you are personally targeted?

I worry for the situational

awareness up close.

How quiet are we talking here?

That's a great question.

So the the threat priority

system uses a bucketing system

where the highest threat to the

player is going to be turned up,

and the next level of enemies is going

to be turned down just a little bit,

and then any friendly characters

and weapons in the game are going

to be turned down the most,

and the great thing about that

is that a lot of the time,

especially in multiplayer,

you're going to be playing really

close with your teammates.

You're going to be running around the

map together and trying to stay close,

so in past games, your teammates weapon

fire would be the loudest thing in the mix.

And what this system does is it?

It brings those down so that you can

really hear the most threatening enemy,

and then right under that will be

the other enemies that are nearby.

So it's not going to make those

completely inaudible. In fact,

it will help bring those up in the mix,

because your teammates won't be

quite so loud anymore.

Touch it, that's super cool.

I actually didn't know that we had such

like an incredibly detailed stack ranked

list of Brett prioritization there.

That's super cool.

This next question is will the music be

adaptive like it was in earlier Halo titles?

Well, the tracks play out differently

depending on the gameplay state.

Absolutely yes, you know,

it's hard to even put music in a

game nowadays that isn't adaptive.

In some ways we're utilizing some

technology like Wis for engine along

with some custom developed tools

and music systems to help track.

What the player is doing,

what the enemy AI is doing at

anyone given time and also we take

into account a lot of what we

consider to be a player intention,

what a player might be doing next,

or how we could react to what

a player might be doing next.

Whereas you know are they going

full on into battle or they.

Keeping back and sniping?

Or are they just passing through

and walking to the next experience?

Well, sort of, just, you know, not really.

Even fully engaging in the experience

that there is unfolding in front of them.

So all of that is taken into account

and it's constantly improving that too.

You might be walking through the

world and get a piece of music

while you're just exploring that.

Carries over into combat engagement,

whereas if you just walked into

the combat engagement without

that piece of music playing,

you get something else.

So it is very adaptive,

based on what you're doing

very where you're at.

Yes,

very adapted based on where you're at,

what you're doing,

where you're at in the story,

even what music is chosen is kind

of indicative of what you've

already accomplished in this story,

so we can kind of keep things

fresh and keep things moving.

So what I look really look forward

to is we have a pretty tech techie

music team here on site that we

put a lot of thought and care into

how the music plays out and think

once the game comes out and you can

experience it will be able to start

talking and releasing more details

about the underlying technical stuff

again without giving away spoilers now.

So not just say yes,

but a strong emphatic.

Yes, we will have this definitely.

Yes, awesome yeah,

thank you for diving into that one.

Alright, so our next question from the

community is what's the toughest sound

effect to design or implement that

you're allowed to talk about and why?

Yeah, I think kind of every area

of sound design kind of has its

own unique set of challenges,

and it's definitely from

a content perspective.

You know, it can be kind of difficult

to conceptualize something that

doesn't exist in the real world.

But I'd probably have to say

that creating vocalizations for

creatures and characters that

don't have any like actual verbal