Case study: Robot design and influences.

The robot will be the main focus of sound in the game displaying a variety of steps, impacts and various expressive vocal noises. In . this post I will talk about the influences and inspirations that i will draw ideas from when designing my robot sounds.

The first game that comes into mind when thinking about recent successful titles focused around robots would be Japanese developer Square Enix's 2017 release Nier: Automata, in Neir you play as a humanoid android whose sound design is not always robotic, however the main characters aside there are a ridiculous amount of variation in robots in the game mostly in the form of enemies the player must face. The standard big robot enemies in the game (can be seen timestamped here https://youtu.be/NqDP8vtbw1A?t=396) are a good case study as they seem about the same size and material as the player character in my game. Their footsteps and movement are loud, janky and somewhat unrefined and low quality. This is a similar basis to the sound I want for my robot as he looks somewhat low quality.

The game also has some really awesome voice noise full with expression giving the robot enemies more character than their low quality designs suggest, my personal favourite being this example from the opera boss fight https://youtu.be/mWeOs7wpu70?t=140. this is an idea I would love to implement into my game when recording ADR giving the main character more expression, emotion and likeability.

Another great source of inspiration for robotic movement sound are the micheal bay transformers movies. Although his films are commonly known to be over to top and sometimes even a little bit too overbearing, the transformers movies were innovative in creating and using new extreme over the top flashy sound design which not many had ever attempted before. I especially love the small detail that goes into making a single footstep so big and exciting, this can be seen in this clip especially https://youtu.be/DgQHgy7Nmkk?t=115 .

I will attempt to take the best parts of these inspirations when designing my own sound for robot movement, I belive using a variety of big metallic objects and synthesis I will be able to replicate and expand on these sounds suiting them more to the style of the robot in my game.