Baldur's Gate 3: Spell Sound Design Compilation

[@GabbyJFS_02]

I absolutely love just how *powerful* so many of these spells sound. I’ll admit in most games I overlook magic as my strategy is typically “hit things until they die,” but Baldur’s Gate 3 doesn’t make your wizards, sorcerers and what have you seem “squishy.” Currently playing as a Druid and I’ve never felt more badass lol. Phenomenal job, thank you for all your hard work!

[@nikolajdehaan]

Phenomenal work, sounds amazing - both isolated here and in context when playing the game

[@MrPandabros]

Nice work man! Adding this to the inspiration folder. Wish more games uploaded vids like this

[@louis-etiennepayer3839]

Haste, confusion, psionic overload, diving strike and cloud of daggers are my favorites ! Very cool !

[@conker206]

Frank - I'm on my first playthrough of BG3 and I have about 90'ish hours logged. One of the first things I fell in love with was the sound design. I love it. Everything sounds deep and super impactful. One of my favorite sounds is Shield of Faith. While it might be a small detail, I love the "outro" to Shield of Faith. It almost sounds like some Angels harmonizing a prayer or something. I'm not sure how to explain it but I hope that makes sense. I do have a question if you have the time to answer. I was watching a KZbin video called Baldur's Gate 3 Sound Design - Paladin's Divine Smite. Of course, the sound of this is incredible. But I noticed at the end of the effect, it sounds like voice actors or a choir singing "Ohhhhhh" or "ahhhhhh". Are those sounds actual people or just a reverberating "impact" sound? It would be after the character hits the enemy with his weapon. All my life, my ears have noticed details like these I'm describing. So to you and other sound designers, don't think these things aren't noticed or appreciated.

[@markbergsound]

So very cool! Just finished this phenomenal game what a dream to have worked on this title :)

[@Ahcam9]

I'm really curious about the processing and the layering for those sounds! Any chance to have a making of for some of those? :o BTW, thanks for this job, the Sound Design in BG3 is sooooo pleasant for ears!

[@frankmunro3303]

It's not something I have laying around but maybe I can look in to editing together a small explanation ya!

[@Ahcam9]

@@frankmunro3303 oh damn I'm really curious and I'd love it! 😍

[@marcopiazzaiv5749]

Really awesome!! I'm curious what your primary DAW for designing is?

[@frankmunro3303]

Hey so for this project it was entirely done using Reaper

[@marcopiazzaiv5749]

@frankmunro3303 very cool!! I've been seeing a lot of sound designers gravitate towards Reaper. I'm still a die hard Ableton fan for the design aspect but I may check it out!

[@frankmunro3303]

@@marcopiazzaiv5749 Nice! I have only used the demo version of Ableton before. But to be honest it seems very intuitive and powerful for actually doing the sound design. I feel it's just the exporting capabilities and a few other minor things that make it kind of unappealing from a game audio / film audio perspective.

[@marcopiazzaiv5749]

@frankmunro3303 absolutely I couldn't agree more, the intutiveness with the sampling automation and just Audio manipulation in general is incredible but it gets a bit hairy when working with video and exporting. In the end it's about the artist not the instrument though haha

[@okzerus]

the footsteps....

[@frankmunro3303]

🤣 yes I realized they were playing after I captured everything and it was a lot so I just got over it. It drives me crazy too don't worry

[@lasorman8492]

Learning about how all this works would be an awesome side course for upcoming game devs. Got any resources?

[@frankmunro3303]

Depends on what specifically you're trying to learn? just in general how sound for games works? Or more in depth on how to actually craft sounds ?

[@lasorman8492]

@@frankmunro3303 both the technical and artist sides of it. Artistic sense of what the sound you are creating is trying to portray, feel, and communicate to the player, and the technical side of how to create parts of a sound to blend them together to make a sfx that best achieves that artistic goal. You are creating spell sfx, which have a lot of sounds mashed and blended to create a concoction of mystic, arcane, toned impact. It would not be easy to just do Foley. You have to get really creative in your approach. So the question is, where can you start to then get to where you are?

[@frankmunro3303]

@@lasorman8492 Fair enough. Firstly I would recommend checking out Air Wiggles. It's an online community for all types of sound people and constantly has a flow of people asking questions and sharing resources. And it's completely free you just need to make an account www.airwiggles.com/home As for specific people that have helped me. For more of the philosophical aspect I would recommend CujoSound. He does breakdowns of what games might be doing and even offers some walk throughs of designing things. Also Marshall Mcgee offers a lot of similar type videos. As far as maybe more actual hands on technical stuff I recently started watching some stuff by David Dumais Audio. Also Aftertouch audio has more specific design tutorials. I think those should get anyone off to a good start and have a decent understanding of maybe how to craft sounds. There are lots of really talented people out there though you are bound to come across. And if there's something very specific you want to know there is probably a video out there.

[@lasorman8492]

@@frankmunro3303 Fantasic. Something like this will help many sound designers and solo game devs get a good start into making juicy sfx

[@frankmunro3303]

@@lasorman8492 Looking forward to hearing those 😄

[@gonzaloflierl1169]

*Promosm*