Sound design in visual novels

[Vokoca]

I think we can all agree that the most important thing in a VN is the story, with perhaps the art right behind. The soundtrack is also an important part, but what I feel like is quite overlooked are the sound effects. I've honestly never paid that much attention to them since they seems to be quite lazily done most of the time (very few, stock sounds), but after reading a bit of Totono, it brought to my attention just how important sound effects in a visual novel can be. They went for the little things like cars humming in the distance, footsteps echoing throughout the abandoned school at night and the like - but just these small details do wonders with the atmosphere.

 

What do you guys think? Is sound design an important part of visual novels? Are there any VNs where you particularly liked/hated it?

[DimDito]

It is fairly important in that it could immensely contribute to the immersion, but I don't think it has that big of an impact when compared to other aspects like music or plot itself. Although not as significant, it does enhance the experience in a lot of ways.

 

I haven't played a lot of VNs, but the sound designs that stood out for me were so far Grisaia no Kajitsu and Fate/Stay Night. The effects in Grisaia (be it gunshot, shrugs, punches) felt crisp, and the way the characters sound in the bathroom were very authentic. In FSN, I was referring to the scenes without music, in its place instead are sounds of a ticking clock, students running about, clanking silverware at dinner, rustling leaves etc. It also proves that background noise on its own without music can be more atmospheric and immersive.

 

Haven't played a lot so those were rather shallow examples... 

[Zhiroo]

All I remember is having to stop all sound except the VA in Ikikoi because the music and the sound effects were terrible. FSN had great sound effects and also Clannad had perfect sound I think especially the BGM is one of the best in VNs.

[Monmon]

For me, sound, bgm n voices is one of the important things in vn. Ofc story too, for art hm..most of vn these days have all different art one from another(i love some of grisaia's art n majikoi), and i dont mind if my next vn on the list art is worse than the last.

 

I personally love sounds design in comyu

where Kagome killing 3 guys with kukri, the sounds of slicing is so real.

Their battles too have a really good sounds that match the situation n timing perfectly.

[shcboomer]

I personally feel like BGM is an important aspect of a VN as well. It's really not easy to read through a VN without some semblance of acceptable music. For example, I don't think I could read a VN if it was all dubstep BGM.

[Nyanko]

I would say sound is almost as important as the story. If the story is not too original (like your average school,romance or supernatural), the sound design can really make it or break it.

Also a good example -even though its kind of a sound novel- is Rose Guns Days, the story isn't that special but there is a lot of detail in sound and music is really divers (I should also give some credit to the huge amount of sprites though). These things just make the story feel more alive. In I/O I also noticed that the music set the mood, even though there were not that many tracks, they used the right tracks at the right moments.

I don't really read anything where the music ruined the story for me, but there were some VNs where I felt the music was lacking something. An example is Swan Song. I have no idea why but I can't recognize a single track of that VN when I listen to it on youtube. The story in Swan song is quite good, but its slow paced and in my opinion this could've been better, or atleast feel better, if they paid more attention to the music. 

 

For example, I don't think I could read a VN if it was all dubstep BGM.

But what if the dubstep is really fitting for the story for some reason (lol). I don't think you have to like the kind of music actually, but the music should fit the scenes. I can't say I like to listen to Saya no Uta's Schizophrenia but it was great hearing it during the story. 

[Vokoca]

I was mostly referring to sound effects/ambience with my question, but in terms of music, I definitely agree that it builds most of the atmosphere; I would even argue that VNs wouldn't have anywhere near as much impact with bad or no music at all.

 

But yeah, I was talking strictly about the sound effects, not BGMs. For example, there's a scene in Chaos;Head where a certain character fires a gun - but the actual sound effect they used was so weak that it almost singlehandedly broke the whole scene for me. I'm pretty sure Steins;Gate had a very similar problem. I do realize this is a really nitpicky topic, but I was wondering what other people think about it. It's also nice to see which VNs go out of their way in this direction.

 

I haven't played a lot of VNs, but the sound designs that stood out for me were so far Grisaia no Kajitsu and Fate/Stay Night. 

Yeah, especially F/SN stepped its game up compared to Tsukihime... that VN was horrendous from the SFX standpoint... and BGMs weren't much better.

[DimDito]

I was mostly referring to sound effects/ambience with my question, but in terms of music, I definitely agree that it builds most of the atmosphere; I would even argue that VNs wouldn't have anywhere near as much impact with bad or no music at all.

 

But yeah, I was talking strictly about the sound effects, not BGMs. For example, there's a scene in Chaos;Head where a certain character fires a gun - but the actual sound effect they used was so weak that it almost singlehandedly broke the whole scene for me. I'm pretty sure Steins;Gate had a very similar problem. I do realize this is a really nitpicky topic, but I was wondering what other people think about it. It's also nice to see which VNs go out of their way in this direction.

 

What's wrong with Steins;Gate?

 

Also, why aren't you ever online on skype?

[InvertMouse]

For VNs, the music is more important to me than the sound effects. I can get annoyed if there are too many sound effects between the lines, especially when they are much louder than the voices XD.

[Decay]

I get annoyed at there being too many sound effects between lines too, but that's almost always due to really shitty action scenes that poorly describe the action and use cheap VFX and SFX as substitutes for good action writing. One of FS/N's big strong points (or perhaps its biggest strong point) is how detailed and intense the writing is for all of the action scenes. Sound effects should enhance the writing, not replace it. 07th Expansion's games (Higurashi, Umineko, etc) are also well known for their strong sound design. I gave Koihime Musou a shot recently because I've heard some people talking about it, and it's super guilty of this. Most of the action scenes are seriously just lots of grunts followed by cheap and shitty sound and visual effects (too bad there isn't much else about that game that's any better). Dengeki Stryker is another game I played recently with rather poor action scenes that overly rely on effects, although not nearly to the same extent. And most of the rest of that game is entertaining enough, thankfully.

[Vokoca]

What's wrong with Steins;Gate?

 

Also, why aren't you ever online on skype?

I might be remembering wrong, but I think it had the same horrendous gunshot effect as Chaos;Head. Sure it was just one-time thing in both of these, but damn, that was bad...

 

As for Skype, blame uni for this. I'm glad I have enough time to check this site from time to time...

 

For VNs, the music is more important to me than the sound effects. I can get annoyed if there are too many sound effects between the lines, especially when they are much louder than the voices XD.

 

I get annoyed at there being too many sound effects between lines too, but that's almost always due to really shitty action scenes that poorly describe the action and use cheap VFX and SFX as substitutes for good action writing.

Oh, this can definitely be a problem too. AkaGoei has this bizarre problem too, where sometimes the action scenes are carefully described, and the other times it's just sound effects.... and pretty much no text at all. I didn't mind it too much since it usually went well with the pacing, but I can easily see this getting annoying if they used it too much.

[Clephas]

See Hapymaher, my game of the year 2013.  That game's music is on par with the best of the jrpg golden era, and that's saying a lot. 

 

Two issues:  In the last ten years, the quality of music direction for games in general has plummeted.  Rare exceptions like Nier only serve to highlight how pathetic the rest are.  Another is that the original reason the quality of music/sound direction was so high a decade ago was because of the rarity of voice-acting, due to system limitations.  To make games (rpgs in particular) more enjoyable, they had to use the music to create the atmosphere, more than the visuals.  As a result, we got masterpieces like Chrono Cross's and Chrono Trigger's soundtracks (it really is stunning what they managed within the limits of the SNES's abilities). 

 

As new ways of creating atmosphere, such as voice-acting and more superb visuals, were introduced, companies put a lot less effort into the music.  The results are fairly obvious.

[Ravi]

anyone playing hapymaher?i just started it and find the music really catchy especially the opening B)

[Clephas]

I already finished it twice, lol. 

 

Incidentally... the music in this video.  A wonderful fusion of great music and great voices. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSIu2CCRrA4

[Clephas]

... for one thing, Monster Hunter games are 'hunting games' literally.  People just classify them as rpgs here because we don't consider hunting games to be a genre.  Also, that issue doesn't apply to turn-based console-style rpgs, so the makers of those don't have an excuse for not using all their tools to their advantage.

 

Also, 'catchy' tunes aren't necessarily what I was talking about.  Properly used music has a strong effect on emotion, which is important for storytelling.  That is one of the big reasons why it is so important in VNs, which don't usually have gameplay to go along with the story.  An example of botching this 'music-storytelling' link would be the last Star Ocean game.  So many times in that game, the music was jarring in how it was unsynched with the actual emotional atmosphere of a given scene.  I also experience that frequently in moege VNs, as they are heavily reliant on visuals and voice-acting to set the atmosphere, leading to lackadaisical treatment of music-direction..

 

As for sound-effects... one of my favorites is Tokyo Babel's sword-slicing-through-flesh sound... so meaty.

[Clephas]

Well, one of the big issues in all forms of commercial gaming is the producer - who  usually isn't a gamer - shooting off his mouth and making demands.  While knowing trends is useful to making a hit game, it isn't always a good choice to just obey the newest trend... that tendency is one of the bigger flaws of the massive video game conglomerates like EA.  Of course, what a maker wants to do with a game isn't always a path to a hit either, but generally speaking, nothing good comes from a non-gamer interfering with the process of making a game, lol.  One of the areas a producer has the biggest authority over is how the money is used... and generally, music budgets are generally either very low or directed to someone who is 'famous' or 'trendy' (because a big-name studio just HAS to have a big-name composer, lol).

[Darklord Rooke]

What do you guys think? Is sound design an important part of visual novels? Are there any VNs where you particularly liked/hated it?

 

It's important for a novel to engage all the senses, so if sound effects aren't included in the VN then descriptions of the sounds should be included in the prose. Which way they do it doesn't matter to me, as long as it's there. 

[Life]

What do you guys think? Is sound design an important part of visual novels? Are there any VNs where you particularly liked/hated it?

I'm a person who constantly tries to challenge my own emotions and the stuff that separates good from amazing is the emotional impact. Music plays a major part as it helps set a scene and personally, if the music has helped make a scene stand out then I will find myself enjoying the music as well.

 

 In the last ten years, the quality of music direction for games in general has plummeted. 

One of my concerns is that modern day music is shifting towards more lyrical music based around the words instead of the flow from the instruments. This kind of limits the importance behind the emotional impact in songs and might be one of the reasons why the music is losing such quality.

[Vokoca]

Thank you for the awesome replies! I strongly agree that not only the music, but its placement is very important for the atmosphere as well. I actually have a thing to add to that - the transitions between the music tracks/silence are very important as well. I didn't even think about this until I've played Akatsuki no Goei: Trinity,  which went about this in a very clumsy way - say there was an emotional scene with BGM playing, but they used to suddenly cut into a different scene with pretty much no transition at all. No fade-outs, the music just got cut, and the story got forced along, it really hurt the experience in a very unfortunate way.

 

As for whether the quality of music is declining nowadays... I don't know, I wouldn't jump to that conclusion so fast. Granted, I haven't read nowhere near as many VNs as Clephas did, so I probably don't know what I'm talking about, but I was under the impression that even back in the day, all the OSTs weren't great. We get a great, fitting OST from time to time - I'd say it mostly depends on the people who make it, not really on the passage of time. Take Hachimyoujin, for example - I've only read the prologue, but that music blew me away instantly; and that VN came out in the late 2013. Great OST should be more of an exception than a rule--but please do correct me if I'm wrong.

[Clephas]

Generally speaking, Light and the other major action-VN companies are exceptions to the rule.  They put more effort into every aspect of their games, because they know their survival is dependent on providing an exciting experience.  For 'peaceful' VNs, it is very rare now to see truly excellent music direction.

 

Edit:  What I mean is that presenting chuuni games as a representative example is... somewhat pointless.  By its nature, the chuuni genre attracts talented but eccentric people, and the results can be mixed... but inevitably, there is a definite artistic edge to serious chuuni that shows in aspects such as the language, art, and music.

[Funyarinpa]

I think SFX is not as important as music. For example, (9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors HUGE SPOILER:)

 

A little girl crying when you try to solve a simple sudoku puzzle might have looked simply weird, but with Morphogenetic Sorrow

 

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playing in the background, it brought me on the verge of crying heartily. (And this was with an EMULATOR!)

Also, one particular ending in Virtue's Last Reward. </3

 

However, SFX indeed can make a scene sound cheesy or goofy and break the emotion. Think of it as Skype call sound beeping in as you are playing Counter Strike, or a cellphone ringing in the movies.

[Clephas]

Sound effects can serve a number of different specific purposes... but the most important generalized aspect of them is that they help draw the player/reader into the game in question, giving it a better sense of solidity. 

[Funyarinpa]

I object.

 

Like I said, they serve different purposes. While music can set a tone for a scene, sound can suggest events in a way neither music nor pictures can. For example, presence. Footsteps, whispers, murmurs - it's hard to say these are more important than music in setting an eerie tone because they do it in different ways... that aren't even mutually exclusive, by the way.

 

For the record, I think that SFX indeed is critical for the success, though I think music is more important in that part. Opinions differ, though. 

[Vokoca]

That's not necessarily true. As I mentioned in my first post, in Kimi to Kanojo to Kanojo no Koi, there are a lot of moments where the atmosphere is achieved only by the sounds of ambience. It conjured up a mellow, and somewhat empty feeling, that I think wouldn't be possible with a musical piece instead.

[Vokoca]

Oh no, the VN had a great OST. They just knew when and how to use it.

 

Though I agree, you can definitely achieve more variety with music than you can do with SFX - that shouldn't be a reason for companies to neglect it, though.