Shuichi Kobori (Audio Director)

How long have you been with The Evil Within 2 team? What’s your primary job within the team?

We started development pretty soon after we finished working on the DLCs for the last game, so I guess a little over 2 years. My primary job is directing and managing anything related to sound and music.

What was the most challenging aspect of creating your part of The Evil Within 2? What are you most proud of?

I would say that the most difficult thing was trying to get everything done to go with the game after it arrived in its final form. For any game development project, most of the strain of audio development is shifted to the latter stages of the project.

If you were involved in developing both Evil games, how did the creative process for the second game compare to the first?

For the audio team in particular, the addition of some new middleware and a skilled audio programmer allowed us to do more with the audio than we could before, to make it more vibrant and effective than we were able to do for the last title.

How did you get into video games as a career? Is there one game in particular that inspired you?

During the PS1 era, I applied for a part-time job creating sound effects for a big-name game company, and I was lucky enough to get accepted. That was what started my career. In fact, one of my part-time coworkers from back then is also on our team right now!

The most influential titles for me are the Metal Gear Solid series. (My time spent with these games planted a seed in me that probably had a lot to do with who I am now.)

What is your favorite horror/survival game? You favorite horror film?

Game: Alan Wake

Movie: The Ninth Gate

What games are you playing right now? (Multiple games if you’re playing more than one)

Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and Gravity Rush

The environmental audio in The Evil Within 2 is very effective at keeping the player nervous and on their toes. What were some techniques that you used to make players feel uneasy or afraid?

There are a lot of noises in the real world that we just filter out and don’t really notice. We intentionally amplified these kinds of noises to make them stand out more. Instead of always hearing the same noises in the same places, every once in a while there will be an unexpected noise. This gives a mixture of times where it feels realistic, and where it feels like there’s something “wrong.” This puts players unconsciously on guard.

We’re also using ambient drone to good effect; sometimes it changes unpredictably, and sometimes it’s changed intentionally to change the player’s state of mind.

Also, our engine (the STEM Engine) allows for dynamic changes to audio effects, so we can use situations like something being on the other side of a wall or door, the environment changing from a long hallway to a spacious room, things moving around the environment and so on to their greatest effect. This lets us effectively draw the player’s attention and caution to enemy movements, events, and other sounds, which is important in a horror game. I think that this engine is able to use this to good effect, even though it was a lot of work for the audio team [laughs].