“Wonder Woman is a single-player action-adventure game set in a dynamic open-world. This third person experience will allow players to become Diana of Themyscira and introduce an original story set in the DC Universe, while also featuring the Nemesis System.”
Responsibilities as Audio Director:
Setting the high-level vision for audio and reviewing content
Management and mentorship of the audio team
Sound design across various game systems, concepts and prototypes
Setting and maintaining music vision, working closely with an external composer
Music implementation
Creating new pipelines for dialogue, cinematic audio, and haptics implementation in Wwise
Setting tech priorities and forming roadmaps with the audio programmer
Shadow of War was the followup to Shadow of Mordor. Being a sequel, our audio goals with this game were simple: make everything bigger and more epic. The enemies were bigger and the world was bigger.
From an audio perspective we wanted to build on the existing systems to create a more engaging and polished presentation across the board. Shadow of War is a game of layered systems that interact unpredictably, which made it a blast to play, but also made it challenging to mix and test. We had to find the sweet spot between sonic clarity and overwhelming cacauphony. We needed the player to be able to hear the most important elements clearly, but didn’t want to lose the gritty, visceral essence of Mordor.
Responsibilities as Senior Sound Designer:
Sound design and implementation
Character movement, character Foley, content layering and sharing
Presentation SFX tuning for enemy “showdown” moments
Ambience and world objects
Dialogue systems and voice processing
Owner of dialogue tools scripting pipeline for the Nemesis System
Mixed in-game, non-cinematic dialogue throughout the game
Voice FX processing design, both baked and runtime
Owning the pipeline for all non verbal vocalizations/efforts from start to finish
Mixing
Final mix with Director of Audio
Dynamic mixing for combat, states/side-chaining
Dynamic listener position, RTPC driven
Reverb and Obstruction/Occlusion tuning across the game
Shadow of Mordor was a big pivot from Monolith’s previous games. It was our first third person action game and was an amazing opportunity to explore a new perspective. We consciously wanted to bring some of that first person shooter intimacy to the title and I think we achieved it.
The Nemesis System was a particularly interesting feature where players could have multiple encounters with orcs, allowing them to build their own story arcs and personal relationships over time. With our audio work we wanted to support this system as much as possible. By fine tuning the in-your-face orc taunt dialogue and adding conditional SFX and music we were able to bolster the narrative continuity and generally make interactions with enemies as memorable as possible.
Responsibilities as Senior Sound Designer:
Dialogue systems and voice processing
Working with the audio programmer to develop, and test new dialogue scripting system from scratch
Voice FX processing and mastering
Editing and implementing all non-verbal vocalizations/efforts
Creating new combat dialogue “hook” system to make it easier to tune playback frequency and repetition
Guardians of Middle-earth was an arcade title that Monolith created using the Lord of the Rings license. It was a MOBA, which was a fun new challenge for the studio and for the audio department. Voice limiting and priority management were super important to make sure critical gameplay information was delivered to the player as clearly as possible. The action could get chaotic very quickly, so always making sure we were highlighting the iconic heroes and their abilities was crucial. This was also the first title we shipped using Wwise.
Responsibilities as Sound Designer:
Designing and implementing a new voice system using Wwise for the hero characters and announcer
Editing, processing and implementing all voices and vocalizations
Tuning listener position, spread, panning and reverb to work with the isometric style of the game
Gotham City Impostors was a 1st person multiplayer game based on the idea of regular people choosing sides, dressing up like Batman and Joker, and fighting it out in the streets. It was silly, cartoony and a lot of fun to work on. Our approach to sound was to utilize classic cartoon SFX (zips, slides, honks) and blend them with more grounded, realistic guns and environment sounds. Our biggest challenge was in containing the audio chaos that can happen with an unpredictable online multiplayer game. This was also our last title shipped using Monolith’s proprietary audio engine.
Responsibilities as Sound Designer:
Sound design and implementation for weapons and gadgets
This was my first title in game audio. Initially hired to engineer actor voice sessions and handle everything dialogue related, I quickly started taking on more sound design tasks and haven’t looked back.
Responsibilities as Sound Designer:
Recording, editing, processing, implementing all voice content
Hand-processed radio FX, with custom storytelling “radio play” content
Designing sounds for the Abomination vocals and movement, and the EPA mech suit
Generalist, fixing bugs and making mix tweaks as we closed out the project
