Red Dead Redemption 2’s Soundscape Made Me Sit At The Campfire And Just Listen

thegamer.com:

Loading Red Dead Redemption 2 up, I find myself in a dusty town in The South. Before doing anything, I decide to close my eyes in order to hear my situation better, and the particularities of my surroundings pipe through.

There’s a banjo picking out a lilting tune. Dogs barking. Horses neighing a little distance off. Wagons roll over a crumbly road, bridles tinkling as they pass. All these details are described through sound, providing distance and depth, helping to bring all of it alive, to make it seem real. The banjo starts to speed up, rolling through the strings, gaining velocity.

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I move Arthur Morgan through the town. There’s the crunch of gravel underfoot and the mulch of grass. Little birds whistling, crows cawing. I listen intensely, using a pair of decent headphones, and a world opens up, and the buzz of a mosquito tells me this region is hotter and more humid than the one from which I recently removed.

I find a stranger who’s been hollering. His name is Jeremiah Compson, an old man sleeping rough on a bench, and he tells me to help him find his old possessions in his repossessed house, and I take pity on him. I ride thunderously, hooves thumping the ground, to the place marked on my map, his derelict house...

Recently, I played Alien: Isolation on an iPad and I used a pair of wired headphones to immerse myself, but it was the game itself that heightened my audio perception. It’s very different to Rockstar’s cowboy simulator, being a first-person survival horror where you’re confined to the claustrophobic corridors of the space station Sevastopol. But like Red Dead, it brings its environments to life through outstanding sound design. Sevastopol is alive