Behind the Foley of Ghost of Yōtei

If you've played Ghost of Yōtei you probably noticed that Foley plays a big part in its overall soundscape and is very present in the mix throughout gameplay. For us, detailed character movements have been crucial in getting the player immersed in the fantasy of playing a wandering ronin in 17th century Ezo and that meant the audio systems driving these sounds had to be adaptable and efficient.

Runtime variable control of parameters such a attack, release, pitch shift, static filters and sweeps, pitch ramps and dives on a per-sound basis, along with assets crafted to a precise spec by both the PlayStation Studios Foley team of Johanna Fang and Blake Collins, as well as our in-house team enabled us to create highly precise Foley for a huge range of animation types - all without having to constantly go back and create new, bespoke assets for complex movements.

Our audio director Brad Meyer covers all this and more in his deep dive into Ghost of Yōtei's Foley pipeline from asset recordings all the way to how the tools we use to tag animations were designed.

If you're curious about how I put these tools to work tagging thousands of animation clips as an implementer, check out my little reel below!