Developer Interview

What are your thoughts on unit speech?

Speech in the Company of Heroes franchise has always had a unique identity, and an intense complexity—players were hearing new lines of speech even after years of play. Building on the same system that drove the original, and with nearly 17,000 lines of dialogue, we’ve added and refined the CoH2 speech design to again deliver a rich and contextually accurate experience. Squads are aware of their surroundings, and listening to what they have to say can alert you to both dangers and opportunities—that and what they might have had for dinner last night.

What unit/ability are you most proud of in terms of sound?

There isn’t one specific unit or ability, but rather three categories of sound that I am especially proud of.

Vehicles like tanks and armored transports need to convey the power and size of their real-life counterparts, and to that end we’ve added many behaviors to give them as much dynamic life as possible. In addition to the engines, there is a host of contextual sounds such as gear shifts, braking, and suspension movement. These all give the vehicles a lot of character, and their sound signatures can be useful if you listen for them. One of my favorite moments in the game is hearing the approach of enemy armor before I can see them, their echoing rumble floating out of the fog of war.

Weapon fire sound effects in the Company of Heroes franchise have always been very strong, but we felt that they could still improve. For CoH2, we recorded nearly all of the guns in the game using authentic weaponry. The results are great—all of the weapons sound as they should, and sound great. Some of my favorites are the chug of the DP-28, the crack of the Kar98, and of course the terrifying MG42.

The score for Company of Heroes 2 surpassed my expectations tenfold. Working with composer Cris Velasco, the score evolved to become something great. It perfectly captures the central themes of CoH2, and provides an emotional backstory to the action.

What was the most challenging part of the game’s audio?

Because they have so many components that all must work in harmony, the vehicles were a big challenge in terms of sound design and tuning. It was a long process to give each army and each vehicle a unique character while keeping them all cohesive.

The audio mix itself was a challenge as there is so much going on at any given time. We’ve added a lot of detail in the world—from material-specific debris on explosions and impacts, to the jangle of an MG42 being carried cross-country. The challenge was to create a dynamic mix that would react to the state of the game and be well balanced in the quiet moments as well as the loud.