Capturing Destiny’s Signature Audio Essence in Destiny: Rising
With any long established IP, audio is integral to the gaming experience. From the sounds of weaponry to the voices of characters, a wash of memories can emerge for players from just a small audio snippet. Both Sound Lab, a Keywords Studio, and Keywords Studios’ Los Angeles division worked together to curate an audio experience that would feel familiar yet fresh for Destiny: Rising, a cross platform sci-fi RPG shooter set in the iconic Destiny franchise.
The Beginnings with Sound Lab
At Sound Lab, a Keywords Studio, we’ve had a long established relationship with NetEase Games, developer of Destiny: Rising, for 9 years. As the Head of Production on this project specifically, I’ve had the pleasure of seeing our team at Sound Lab work together to curate some incredible audio experiences for players, including Batman: Arkham Shadow, Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, multiple Final Fantasy titles, Valorant, Bayonetta 3 and Fallout 76. So when NetEase approached us in November 2022 to help bring Destiny: Rising to life, I knew this was a project that we could do justice to.
Our responsibilities initially were around creating musical sound design for the races and environments in game, but over time, our responsibilities expanded. We contributed to the sound design for the weaponry, magic, bosses, vocal treatments for magic dragons, robots and aliens, dialogue editorial and we created the sound design and did the mix on most of the promotional trailers (including the global launch cinematic trailer).
In the spring of 2023, NetEase reached out with an additional request for voice over services. This is where the incredible team over at Keywords Studios in Los Angeles entered the project.
Bringing in an Additional Craft
At Keywords Studios in Los Angeles, our VO stages are located on the campus shared with Sound Lab in sunny Burbank, California, making our collaborative work seamlessly integrated. As the Studio Manager, my team and I worked closely with Sound Lab’s dialogue editing team and Andrew.
For the VO work, we focused on script polishing, talent acquisition and casting, artistic direction and, of course, the recording sessions. For Destiny: Rising’s casting process in particular, we prepared numerous casting slides, listened to hundreds of auditions, submitted our top selects and sought approval for all casting decisions. All the while, we plotted and optimised the recording schedule, taking into account the different milestones to hit, contending with the specific time zone requirements of the voice talent, the session director and the NetEase creative teams.
This all would have been so much harder without the immense support we had from NetEase. They encouraged us all along the way to take the time and resources needed to find the perfect talent for each role. While the world of Destiny is fantastical, it's grounded in the real world. Each of the characters has a different and specific ethnic background and they come from all walks of life. It was vitally important for us when casting to be very intentional with representation and inclusion, in order to find the best suited talent for each role to authentically portray the characters. And the results ultimately speak for themselves.
For us, a particular stand out casting was the fantastic Keisha Castle-Hughes, a New Zealand native and prolific actor in film and television, who was able to bring the role of Maru to life in authentic and vivid detail. Keisha first burst onto the scene starring in 2002’s New Zealand indie film Whale Rider, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award at just 13 years old. Working with her was a real highlight for the entire team, and the process was a testament to the importance of authentic and diverse casting.
Creating Audio Magic
With the phenomenal work of Keywords Studios in Los Angeles in nailing the talent casting, script work, recording and artistic direction, we knew at Sound Lab our biggest challenge was staying true to Destiny’s audio signature for the other audio elements. The sounds of Destiny are ingrained in players’ memories. And the added challenge for us was we had to create this audio work with phone speakers in mind, as this is a mobile game.
For Destiny’s familiar sound, we created, from scratch, many of the dialogue designs for the races in game, and we made custom synthesiser chains for much of the musical sound design. Our mammoth library of curated and bespoke sound effects was absolutely indispensable during the project, especially in delivering the perfect sounds to match the game's atmosphere. We modified Python code which allowed us to streamline some of the vocal processing and utilised state-of-the-art noise reduction plug-ins to make the dialogue as pristine and crystal clear as possible. We essentially used every available piece of technology we had to get the job done.
During the whole process, we had to keep in mind that while many mobile gamers play with headphones/earbuds these days, there is roughly an equal amount who use their phone speakers. We had to make sure that every sound translated well, no matter whether we were listening with our big in-studio monitors, consumer grade headphones, or mobile devices. Nowadays, a lot of players are using emulators to access the game from their PCs as well, so we’re quite glad we worked so hard to keep speakers and headphones in mind when designing the audio.
The Result
There were 26 members across both teams from Sound Lab and Keywords Studios in Los Angeles that worked collaboratively to achieve what we did on Destiny: Rising, along with the incredible voice talent and our amazing session director, Wes Gleason.
Ultimately, the audio in game is a testament to the teams behind it, including NetEase. This collaboration and mutual understanding of the project and passion for audio ensured that we were able to deliver everything to the highest standard, while staying true to the Destiny sounds that players know and love.
And really, that’s what it’s all about.
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