Salford City College Eccles Sixth Form Centre

BTEC Extended Diploma in GAMES DESIGN Unit 73: Sound For Computer Games

Game Title Borderlands 2 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgeztXOt6yg

Provide detailed descriptions from chosen examples that establish… Clearly state what production technique(s) you think have been used to create specific soundtrack elements

Setting

The entire action happens in the Hyperion’s base (or more specifically, ‘In the middle of Hyperion Base with no chances to escape’ – 0:47-0:51 – as said by the guy who captured them), we know this from Tiny Tina who says at the beginning “soooo one time Hyperion captured Brick and I”. It also signifies that they aren’t there guests but prisoners. The area they are in emits very supressed dull sounds, seems desolated, which is just fitting to the position they are in. They have drank ‘Truth Juice’ (as mentioned by Tina in 0:33), but Tina is still able to trick Brick into thinking that they are not in the place he thinks they are (and they actually are). At 1:12 Tiny Tina signifies that they are in the ‘dungeon of the evil wizard’. At the same time the change applies, the music changes as well, into more melodic, heroic notes.

These dull, quiet sounds of some wind could have been done with use of VST plugins in a software, or recorded as field recording and then modified in a software to give the sound.

Mood

At first the atmosphere is grave, because of lack of music, and the background noise. It keeps its seriousness to 0:38, where Brick has kind of a dizzy noise, Tina shouts at him and the Hyperion guy threatens her saying ‘you are lucky I don’t hit girls’. After this moment we can hear the contrast of overall seriousness and Tina’s and Brick’s recklessness (they joke about the guy who captured them). The background melody changes while Tina ‘alters’ the surrounding, but the mood keeps its graveness and spookiness until 1:24. Then the mood changes completely into a battle scene inside a real fantasy world and stops immediately at 2:47 when the fight is almost over.

Some parts of the music, which appears in the fantasy part I believe was made with use of traditional instruments. The other part was possibly made with MIDI and VST instruments, or just altered.

Game genre

First-Person Shooter, Action RPG (Role-Playing Game) In this cutscene (since it shows how Tina started her fantasy world) there is no sounds of guns nor anything that signifies it’s a FPS game.

Noises of metal armour, weapons, as well as spinning of some long heavy object were probably done with a studio recording, Foley artistry. If there weren’t the exact object used for this, there

Salford City College Eccles Sixth Form Centre

BTEC Extended Diploma in GAMES DESIGN Unit 73: Sound For Computer Games

First indicator of RPG genre is Tina’s speech (alongside with rising epic music 1:29-2:00). After that the melody sounds just like a theme for a fantasy/medieval adventure, suits a lot to the beginning of a fighting scene. It gets louder with more instruments added when at 2:18 we hear door/gate bang and faint rustle of metal armour, as well as noises of some fantasy beasts (ghoul alike).

was probably some experimenting with what gives out similar sounds.

Narrative

Narrative is continuously told by Tiny Tina with replies of Brick and the Hyperion guy. She says they are captured by Hyperion (in a manner of a voice over at a very start of the cutscene). She tricks Brick into thinking that instead of not having a chance of escape (as the Hyperion guy said before), they are in the ‘Dungeon of the evil wizard’, and she is not Tina, but the Queen of Blowing-up-in-ton and he isn’t Brick, but the Siren. Being persuaded this way, Brick believes he is physically able to break the chains and beat the wizard as well as his allies. He does so and the surroundings go back to normal, where he frees Tina and they both can go to the funeral, but first Brick wants to punch some orcs.

The whole dialogue has been recorded in studio with use of actors’ voice acting.