If you ever wondered why the Baldur’s Gate 3 sound design is so good, it turns out one of the sound designers literally learned blacksmithing to forge foot armour to really nail the game’s metal ‘clank’ noises.
As reported by GamesRadar, Sound designer Glenn Gullskjegg Goa posted a video to YouTube called “Baldur’s Gate 3: Sabaton armor for recording session,” which showed them wearing sabatons – foot armour – while walking, dancing, and jumping around. “In Baldur’s Gate 3, when you wear shoes with metal on them, we wanted them to have a unique sound layer of metal clanks,” the video’s caption says, “I made some sabatons in the forge (I learned blacksmithing) and recorded an hour session of walking on various surfaces with them loosely on.” Now that’s dedication.
Goa also worked on the fireball and monk sounds in Baldur’s Gate 3, according to their X (formerly Twitter) bio, and in a previous tweet said they were behind the audio direction for the Monk class, which involved “[blowing] up bottle rockets underwater and [discarding] prayer bells. Lots of fun things are packed into the monk’s audiosphere.”
Another video posted to YouTube shows their work on the Monk class, with various interesting techniques and materials used to bring the class and their moveset to life – including duct tape ripped off windows, packing foam rubbed together, and the incorporation of the sounds of singing bowls and gongs. Sound designers are really doing the most.
It’s quite the flex to pick up what’s quite a difficult and niche skill like blacksmithing solely to make armour for recording sound effects for a game – particularly given metal armour can be purchased pre-made – but given how great the sound design for Baldur’s Gate 3 is, it’s no surprise the lengths the Larian Studios team have gone to in order to achieve this.
Lead Image Credit: Larian Studios
Leave a Reply