Death Stranding devs talk focus behind audio design at DICE Awards 2020

Death Stranding's developers took home the Outstanding Achievement in Audio Design honor from the DICE Awards ceremony and spoke to Shacknews about their win.


Death Stranding is a game where every decision made in regard to the audio is an important one. That's part of the reason we bestowed our Best Music award to the game here at Shacknews for 2019.

We headed out to the DICE Awards 2020 ceremony for a chat with the developer team, who bagged the Outstanding Achievement in Audio Design honor. They were kind enough to chat with our very own Asif Khan about the work that went into bringing such a monumental task to life – getting the sound in Death Stranding just right.

"A lot," the team said of how much work it required, and how many iterations it took too perfect. "We just keep going until we can't anymore."

"There are a lot of decisions that happen based on the story that's coming through and the visuals coming through. With how we want the player to feel and the experience we want the player to have at those moments, a lot of it comes down to getting the content mixed in, feeling what's right, and then swapping it out again and saying 'not good enough' or saying 'we can do better.'"

The key to making the sound so unique for Death Stranding was found within using a large team and a "unified creative vision."

"There's a lot of talented people with creative disciplines working on these games," the team said of the people hard at work on Death Stranding. "We work directly with the teams over a number of years on this project and had about ten people working on sound within the game."

"We literally make sure we're all in the same page and all working to a singular vision. If we don't have that stake in the story and what's happening, we don't have a compass to move toward."


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