Summary
Have you ever listened to sound effects in video games and wondered how developers make them happen without actually driving a car or firing a gun? Turns out, forCyberpunk 2077at least, some of the sounds you hear when you fire and reload a gun were recorded in a KFC when someone who worked on the game heard the gurgling of the soda machine and had a brainwave.
CD Projekt Redsound designer Sebastian Sagastume recently gave a lecture during the Digital Dragons conference (thanks,GamesRadar), revealing some of the happenstance ways they stumbled upon the perfect sound effects for Cyberpunk’s very popular DLC, Phantom Liberty. One of those moments struck at the most unlikely of times - when Sagastume was in a random KFC in the middle of the night, picking up some food.
Upon hearing the sound of the soda machine while waiting for their order, Sagastume had an idea, and luckily, a recorder in their pocket. “I wanted to ask the manager if I could buy five soda refills in exchange for them to stay quiet and kill the music for five minutes,” he explained. Since the employees likely didn’t know the sound designer’s occupation, everyone present probably thought it was a pretty odd request.
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“Usually, the main rule that I have before recording is I wanted to find sources that organically reminded me of the weapon,” the Cyberpunk sound designer goes on to say. Turns out they were right to think the noises made by KFC’s soda machine sounded like a gun you might hear in Night City, as those recordings made it into the game. You wouldn’t know it, but there are guns in Phantom Liberty that are making the sounds a soda machine makes when filling a cup, but to us, it sounds just like a virtual gun being fired or reloaded.
It’s unclear where exactly the KFC sounds were used. However, Sagastume gave a specific example of a sound they heard in the real world and where it was used in Phantom Liberty. The sound you hear when firing the DLC’s Hercules weapon is actually the sound designer’s partner boiling vegetables.
Even more people are going to be hearing these sounds and experiencing Cyberpunk for the first time this week as CDPR’s newest game comes to theNintendo Switch 2. A launch day game for the new console, Cyberpunk’s Switch 2 port is being celebrated for being one of the only third-party Switch 2 games that’s not a game key card.Its physical edition also comes with stickers and a note from the dev team.
