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Microsoft built Halo 5's weapons 'from scratch' for Xbox One
Halo 5: Guardians' soundtrack isn't the only aspect of the game's audio that got an overhaul -- the developers at 343 Industries had to reimagine what the Xbox One exclusive's weapons sound like, too. Because of the sheer amount of sounds happening at once during firefights, 343 had to figure out some creative ways to keep the aural calamity in check. It's quite a bit different in scale from 343's last outing, 2012's Halo 4, where there was a handful of characters on screen simultaneously, as opposed to 40 or 50 in the forthcoming sequel. "We have many more sounds and the mixing is a very challenging situation," 343 Industries audio director Sotaro Tojima said in a recent interview. "We're establishing pretty much all the weapon sounds from scratch again for Xbox One."
The 'Halo 5: Guardians' soundtrack gives fans what they want
When Microsoft's in-house Halo studio 343 Industries took the franchise over from creator Bungie, it made a bold statement by abandoning longtime composer Marty O'Donnell's iconic score for one mostly written by Neil Davidge of the English trip-hop group Massive Attack. Think of it like Disney replacing John Williams' iconic Star Wars score with something by Randy Newman and you're about halfway there. His changes were drastic, eschewing established musical tropes for something simultaneously foreign and familiar, leaving no sacred cows behind. It was a ballsy move, and at the time 343's freshman bravado made a statement about how it would handle the franchise moving forward. But something happened in the three-year gap between then and now: 343 released Halo: The Master Chief Collection to disastrous technical results. How broken that game was (and in some cases still is) had an effect on the development team, and likely killed some of its confidence.
