Before we kick off next week with details about the upcoming features for the next expansion we wanted to take the time to talk about something exciting which will be patched in as soon as possible after the expansion. We took notice of community discussions about environmental sounds in Darkfall and thus decided to share what some of the development team has been working on for quite a while now:
Environmental Sounds in Darkfall will not only help with getting you more immersed into the game, they will also play a big role in tactics and strategical planning throughout your gaming sessions. In the future sneaking up on enemies will be either easier or harder depending on the environment you find yourself and your prey in. After all it will be easier to get a jump on that sole Mirdain if you take the advantage of a thunderstorm to cover your steps. Alternatively you might want to use the thick intermingling sound of crickets, birds, rustling leaves and bumble bees to dampen down the thundering of your armies cavalry riding through the forest. A sneaky Mahirim might find it easier to stalk his pray during night-time to the sound of a lonely owl.
Darkfall's Environmental sound system will be different than what you are used to from other games. It will use a fully randomized dynamic environment to maximize immersion for players. Depending on the weather and the area you find yourself in, sounds will not just play in single loops at the given location but change dynamically. You will be able to hear a thunderstorm come closer, you will also notice that birds will stop singing until after the storm has passed. You will notice birds chirping in different positions compared to your current location. Which means if you pass through the same location again that obnoxious bird might tweet in your ear from a different location then it did last time.
Since Agon is one open world these sounds will be able to fade into each other depending on the players position as you travel from a dark thick forest to the shore. We strongly feel that a good environmental sound system can only improve immersion for a player and thus we put a lot of emphasis in making it a system which is complementary to our game play.
One of the most important parts we wanted to keep in mind is the advantage or disadvantage you can get through those sounds. We plan to not make it possible to completely disable the environmental sounds for tactical reasons. It will however be possible to influence them to a certain degree.
On this topic it's also important to note that the sounds in the teaser video are exaggerated for demonstration reasons and that everything you see (or hear for that matter) is work in progress and the sound hasn't been edited in any way. Also, the video might still be in processing state.
Darkfall goes Environmental
Linear Mode
