Immersive Sounds - Compendium at Skyrim Nexus. First off, you should know that this mod is much more than merely just replacing existing sound files in the game with different ones. Rather, the aim of ISC is to greatly expand the functionality and scope of the audio in Skyrim. The vanilla sound design is in pretty dire straits, and my educated guess for this is that it was largely hamstrung by being primarily developed for aging console hardware, and thus sacrificed ambition for sound to instead prioritize those resources for other things like better visuals. To remedy this, literally thousands of new individual sounds have been created for the game. A great deal of effort has gone into expanding the audio for elements that I consider part of the core gameplay experience. No longer will you hear the same generic thud when an NPC or creature dies and falls to the ground. No longer will creatures like wolves, draugr, etc cycle between a small repetitive pool of 4 or so universal footstep sounds no matter what surface they traverse. Moving around now always reflects the type of armor you are wearing. Picking up items will much more consistently provide appropriate audio feedback for what kind of item you are looting. A swing from a greatsword being parried by a 1- handed axe now reflects the elements of both weapons clashing and not just a nondescript generic parry sound. Powerful high level shock spells now send thundering reflections across the vast outdoor distances, while remaining more confined if cast indoors. Etc etc etc. The goal is to have all of these small disparate elements add up and provide a more varied, dynamic and reactive audio experience. Ultimately this is also a significant boon to how the entire gameplay feels as there is simply more appropriate feedback for the actions in the world. I am pretty confident when I say that this is probably the biggest individual audio mod on the Nexus in terms of the scope of what it’s doing.
The other goal is to provide an unparalleled amount of options and easy customization for the user. The included NMM and MO- compatible installer provides a wealth of options to choose from in several categories. Whether you prefer a stylized fantasy approach or something more realistic, or perhaps something inbetween, you can usually choose between different variants. There are also plenty of smaller options, usually aimed at muting some aspects that you might find annoying, like the critical hit notifier, or that windy ambient sound that plays while you are being incapacitated/ragdolled. Requires both Dawnguard and Dragonborn. No, I will not make other versions without these requirements. The amount of work you have to do is simply unreasonable when tons of Form. IDs are messed up by removing master dependancies. For those unfamiliar with the terminology, ”foley” refers to all the mundane everyday types of sounds occuring in a scene, such as the rustling from a jacket when a person is moving around, or the faint sound of scuffling debris on the ground. The term stems from the person who first started adding these sounds artificially during post- production in the nascent years of cinema. Since these sounds aren’t very overt at all, we barely even acknowledge or actively think about them as casual listeners. But they are still extremly critical for bringing life to a scene and grounding it in believability. Psychologically we tend to notice its absence moreso than its presence, and just feel that something is off. ISC greatly extends the type of foley you hear Skyrim mainly by leveraging the systems for collisions with different types of materials. Most prominent being the footstep soundsets which I found quite sparse and lackluster. Player movement will now always reflect what you are wearing. Whereas in the vanilla game this was only applied for sprinting, the armor/clothing layer is now appropriately reflected in all movement states from walking and sneaking to running, jumping and landing. It is categorized into clothing, light armor and heavy armor respectively. One of the things I hate the most about video game sound is when all the people around you emit exactly the same foley sounds as you. Not only is it not realistic, but it can be downright disorienting at worst. Real life acoustics are pretty complex, and it’s not as if all the different sounds emanating from the movement of a person and their attire all just decrease in volume uniformly at the same linear scale with further distance. Therefore I went through a lot of extra effort of designing completely different sets of footstep sounds exclusively for NPCs, with less proximity in their characteristics. It may not surprise you to hear that Kirk and I have THOUGHTS on the Destiny 2 beta, which is leaving us cautiously optimistic for the full game. Today on Kotaku. Browse comprehensive list of all the best RPG Games. This should make scenarios with several characters moving around simultaneously simply feel a lot more natural. In addition, I have also added new footstep sounds for material/surface types which were previously not covered and just shared sounds from a different category. This includes metal and sand, which you might come across occasionally in Dwemer ruins or on the northern beaches. Many different creatures and monsters in the game now also have properly dynamic footsteps which react to different surfaces, whereas previously pretty much all of them just rely on a small pool of 4 or so sounds universally. You should now hear stuff like wolves rustling through the grass, a skeleton walking through snow, or a draugr skulking across wood. Not every single creature has been given this treatment, but a very sizeable portion has and I chose to prioritize the kinds of creatures you might end up having as a follower, so as to mitgate the monotony of the sounds when they’re following you around in the long term. Horses now also have a dynamic set of footstep sounds, and has been given the most amount of attention apart from players and humanoid NPCs. They have different sounds for trotting as well as galloping, divided further into front and back hooves, each and all covering a wide range of surfaces and even for wading across water. The second sub- category for foley is physics collisions which has been reworked in much the same way as the footsteps have to make them more dynamic. Ragdoll collisions for NPCs and creatures of all sizes now have unique sounds for a much wider range of surfaces than before. The same also extends to weapons and shields. So for example a dropped sword that falls on a hard stone surface will have a prominent clang, but for softer surfaces like dirt or snow more of the energy is absorbed, so the clang will be more and more subdued the softer the material impact is. In vanilla, most weapons just universally shared generic, nondescript collison sounds for the less dense surfaces. So in ISC there are instead unique sounds for a two- handed sword being dropped on snow, or a one- handed axe dropped on grass, etc. Last are the sounds involved with interactive items in the world. Many kinds of items now have their own unique sounds for being picked up and dropped, which they lacked in vanilla. This includes things like soul gems, necklaces and lockpicks. Looting is a significant part of the core gameplay much like something such as Diablo, and I think a big part of the success and addictiviness behind that kind of formula is the small psychological reward behind always having appropriate audio response to what you’re looting. It just makes picking up rings, potions, etc feel good and entice you to do it over and over, even if you might not need them all that much. Almost everything about the vanilla weapons and shield sounds have been replaced and heavily expanded upon. Each weapon type now has a fully featured soundset of its own for impact categories and swings, whereas in vanilla several of them shared sounds with eachother. A gigantic bottleneck from what I assume are leftover console optimizations has been dealt with, where a weak generic impact sound pre- loaded into RAM would often take priority over the actual intended weapon sound before it has time to be loaded for the next strike, no matter if it’s a tiny dagger or a giant warhammer. Now you should always hear the intended weapon impact right from the start, which is a big boon to the feedback from the gameplay. The entire system for blocking and parrying with both shields and weapons has been overhauled from the ground up. In vanilla, every time you block, or the enemy blocks your attack, you would just hear a generic universal sound based on what item is being used for blocking. ISC instead features a fully fleshed out system where there is appropriate feedback for each and every possible combination. So now you have the specific actual sounds of a two- handed warhammer being blocked by a heavy shield, or a waraxe parrying a blow from a mace, or a greatsword parrying another greatsword, etc etc. This goes a long way in making combat feel more reactive and physical. The audio which makes up magic have been expanded in several ways. First and foremost is that all the different schools, and their respective sub- schools, are now more aurally distinct from one another with each being built around distinctive themes. This gives a much better sense of identity and character for the type of magic you specialize in, whether you are a cryomancer, conjurer or illusionist. Second is that there is now a greater sense of progression in the different tiers/skill levels of spells reflected in the audio as well. For example a thunderbolt now sounds notably different from a lightning bolt, even when you’re charging the spell. And for alteration, oakflesh all the way up to the master level dragonhide armor each give off a different sound appropriate to their theme. And third is that several spells have been given their own dynamic impact soundsets much like how other impact categories work such as weapons. So burning the ground with a fire spell will sound different from the added sizzling of flesh when it connects with a creature.
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