{What I Love!}
Hello! I'm Scruffy, and today I'm delving back into Pikmin 3 after recently getting to look
through its sound bank. This game may be nearly six years old now, but its soundscape still holds
secrets for the discerning listener, and things to teach the aspiring sound designer. So don
some headphones and let's boot up this classic once again. I'm breaking this video up by the
functions and sources of these sounds, and the further we go in this video, the deeper into the
game we go and the more we get into the actual process of creating these sounds. So if you're
fine with a little bit of Pikmin 3 spoilers, I really recommend watching to the end.
Number 1 - Easter Eggs Sometimes sounds are, or appear to be,
downright hidden just for fun. Right off the bat, we can hear something interesting in Pikmin 3's
title screen. If you wait for the whole main theme to finish playing, the musical texture
never fully stops, but it does allow a bed of environmental noises to fade in. This bed
varies depending on the time of day depicted. In the daylight version of the title screen,
we hear mainly mixed birdsong, with some soft rippling water from the brook.
[Pikmin 3's title screen ambience plays]
Nothing out of the ordinary. But in the sunset version, along with the water,
we hear various types of crickets and frogs, cicadas, and even, very occasionally and faintly,
the bleat of a sheep! Maybe I'm getting overzealous about the bleat of a sheep, but this
is its only instance in the game to my knowledge. It feels like a little easter egg that once again
begs the question of whether the animals making these sounds are the real-life animals we know,
hiding out of sight; or the fictional cast of animals that inhabits this game. But I believe
this also introduces a pillar of Pikmin 3 that all these bits of trivia will emphasize: quirkiness.
Pikmin 3 has peculiar moments, unexpected designs, and an air of playfulness it inherited from the
previous games in the series. And just because the game has remarkably realistic-looking environments
and the largest credited sound team in a Pikmin game to date doesn't mean they seek to create
the most lifelike soundscape they can. They can throw fun little details or create sounds
from interesting sources to add personality in ways that visuals alone could not. For example,
drinking juice at the end of day normally comes with a few hearty gulping noises. But on occasion,
just for a lark, you can hear the Koppaites use a straw instead. And,
when you collect a medal in Mission Mode, the Pikmin have a message for each tier of medal that,
while hard to hear in Pikmin language, is discernible when you slow it down 100%.
["Good!" "Great!" "Excellent!" "Perfect!"] And a few more easter eggs during gameplay.
When you're traveling with only the three Koppaite leaders alone in story mode,
they'll occasionally sing part of their planet's musical motif together.
(The sound of the leaders singing) A group of Pikmin left alone in a story
area can occasionally start to hum along to the area's theme, and a 100-Pikmin group made of 20
of each type of Pikmin will occasionally sing part of the Pikmin 3 main theme.
[the sound of Pikmin singing] Now, I differentiate between
these easter eggs and: Number 2 - References
I differentiate the two because, while the following sounds are secretly referencing
other Nintendo franchises, they are not emphasized as secrets to find. In fact, some of them take on
new contexts entirely. When the S.S. Drake is first flying away from Koppai, we can faintly
hear a little triadic series of blips. This nods to Mario moving in Mario Bros with the same little
musical effect. Quaint, yet heroic. Next, when something goes horribly wrong with the S.S. Drake,
we can hear... the dog from Duck Hunt laughing at us. Here, yes the sound carries that history,
but it's been re-contextualized as a sort of user interface malfunction sound. And during
the first day, after Alph is finished receiving a transmission from Brittany, he pockets his KopPad
with a familiar sound... the sound of pocketing something in Animal Crossing. As I discussed
in my sound trivia video on Pikmin 2, these referential sounds serve multiple functions.
They're a convenient fix to a missing sound, they show off Nintendo's vast canon and sound library,
and perhaps at the cost of a little immersion, they give fans of many of the company's series
a little "aha!" moment while still giving the sound itself a new role to fill. Speaking of:
Number 3 - Immersion The opposite of using referential
sounds is creating a new sound in order to increase the feeling of being specifically in
Pikmin 3's environment, which, evidently, is most of the sound bank. Pikmin 3 reflects a question
that a game with 3-dimensional audio needs to address: where is the audio listener? That is,
where is the ear, where is the point from which sounds are actually translated to the
player? Usually the camera is this audio listener, since it's also our source of vision. But every
so often in Pikmin 3, the camera changes to the characters' perspective: when they're using the
KopPad camera. And there's a little immersive detail they added to this feature: when you're
underwater using the camera, you can hear some pretty in-depth air tank sounds...to further let
you know that you are exactly where your player character is, seeing the same things and feeling
the same notion of being underwater. One other detail based on environment: If you're outside,
you'll hear little updates from the day timer telling you the onset of noon, sunset, and the
final 10 moments of the day. But if you're in a cave, these timer sounds get muffled and modulated
slightly in pitch, as though there's some distance and interference between your player character and
the day outside. They're small details, but they didn't have to be added. I appreciate that they
made the soundscape that much more cohesive. And before we continue, spoilers begin from here
on out, so if you haven't finished Pikmin 3, feel free to stop here,
and thank you for watching. If you have finished Pikmin 3, prepare to get a bit more technical in
our late-game sound design talk. Number 4 - Cartoonish Clarity
What do I mean by cartoonish clarity? Well, I'm borrowing the term "clarity" from James Buhler,
David Neumeyer, and Rob Deeming. For them, having clarity is making sense to the audience, being
accessible so that a soundtrack doesn't require excess attention. Creating a soundtrack that has
clarity is more central to film and video games than fidelity, or sounds that faithfully represent
the real world. Nintendo represents that concept in every way it can to make gameplay clear,
including in sounds. For instance, in Pikmin 3, when you break the rock that a Skutterchuck
is carrying, it cries out, followed by a brief bird-like sound. You know, that sound when a
character has birds around their head because they're dizzy. That sound comes from cartoons,
and it's not nearly as realistic as Pikmin 3's environment or soundscape, but it enhances the
idea that the Skutterchuck is dazed, and that this is your chance to defeat it. That, for me,
is cartoonish clarity. A couple other examples. A rolling ball bursting through a rock wall includes
a sound of a bowling ball hitting pins. Skitter Leaves faintly produce this chime sound as they
move and when they die, as if highlighting that sort of magic sense of what looked like a leaf
suddenly springing to life. Desiccated Skitter Leaves have a "desiccated" version of that. You
know, even the sounds of plucking Pikmin sprouts make it cartoonishly clear what your action is,
and those have been around the whole series. I think one of my favorite examples is the music
of the Scornet Maestro. It's a mutilated sample of a harp, put through some sort of ensemble filter
to make it sound insect-like and distorted, yet it still maintains a hypnotic quality that not only
controls the Scornet army, but also represents the progress through and danger of this boss's
main attack. This gesture... [1st harp sound] orders the spiral formation early in the battle,
this gesture... [2nd harp sound] orders the crowd formation halfway through the battle,
and this one... [3rd harp sound]—ah, I love that one—orders the surrounding circle formation
late in the game. The Scornet Maestro's harp mechanics mirror your role as a Pikmin leader.
The harp is used to command Scornets much like the whistle commands Pikmin. And these musical
sound effects highlight gameplay keynotes rather well. Now, speaking of noisemaking animals:
Number 5 - Creature Vox
Did you know that most of the creatures in the catalog of Pikmin 3 had their vocalizations
created from voice actors? With some of them, it's kind of obvious... [Dwarf Bulborb_Vox 482]
[Yellow Wollywog_Vox 780, 77F] [Toady Bloyster_Vox 470] [Peckish_Aristocrab_Vox 7C3, 7C4, 7C5] ...and
with others, it's evident that some pitch editing and effects went into
crafting the sound... [Whiptongue Bulborb_Vox 3E8] [Armored Cannon Larva_Vox 788] [Fiery
Blowhog_Vox 43C] [Vehemoth_Phosbat_Vox 96B, 96C], and there's one group of sounds that appear to be
from an unused or unfinished enemy, that appear to be unedited howls from a voice actor
[unused enemy sounds] Anyway, I wanted to show you two of these
creature voices that I can reverse engineer. The Puffy Blowhog does make some pretty complicated
balloon-like noises. But when it's just idling, it offers a glimpse at one effect added on top
of the voice actor. [Puffy Blowhog_Vox 84E] This silly sound is a voice actor giving a sort
of lazy groan, and then a second layer of that sound with the pitch shifted down 16 semitones,
or an octave and a major third. The formant of the second layer is also slightly increased. Formant
is the prominent frequencies that result from the specific shape of a space, in this case the
human vocal tract. Reshaping our vocal tract to change formants is how we form different vowels,
and changing the formant of a voice without changing the pitch can seriously effect the
tonal quality of that voice. Finally, the sound's pitch wavers very rapidly, ever so slightly,
giving it the alien touch this vocalization needs. All together, this is my re-creation.
[my re-created sounds play]
The second voice I believe I can reverse engineer
is Rock Pikmin. This one's a little simpler. For most samples of any type of Pikmin in Pikmin 3,
it's just someone's voice sped up twofold. But Rock Pikmin occasionally have a second step to
create an extra gravelly quality to it.
[crowd and Rock Pikmin boo the pun]
This is achieved with tremolo, which wavers the volume of this sound clip differently
in the middle and side channels of the sound. Set the tremolo fast enough, and we have our
modified Rock Pikmin sound.
[my re-created sounds play]
It's surprising how few experimental steps it takes to turn the human voice into some
completely new and strange creature. And speaking of new and strange creatures:
Number 6 - Otherworldly Effects Specifically the Plasm Wraith. I had to talk
about this boss's fascinating collection of associated sounds. It has a host of horrific,
otherworldly noises in its compendium ranging from twinkling effects of unknown origin... [two examples play] to slowed
down chimes when it revives its initial form... [low, ominous chiming] to a collection of horror trope sound effects...
[several horror sound effects]
which are made by striking or strumming the strings of a piano with a rubber mallet; to
this odd semiliquid noise... [modified mud churning] This is the noise I wanted to talk about. It's definitely a recording
of some type of mud-like substance frothing, but something's weird about it, like an extra layer
of droning pitch that you can hear in the decay of the first sound. How is that effect created? Well,
it's an effect called convolution reverb. Have you ever been inside your Shower Room and
realized that singing a particular note caused the whole room to resonate? That's a formant, remember
formants? They shape vowels in our voices, but formants in rooms are pitches that are augmented
in resonance because of the unique way a room's shape bounces sound around. Each room emphasizes
specific frequencies, and absorbs others, giving each room a unique reverb with uniquely emphasized
formants. Convolution reverb is a process that steals a sample of real reverb and uses it to
synthesize reverb without needing the room. To do this, we must create what's called an impulse
response (IR). We go into the room and record some very clean acoustic action, such as just a
crack of pure white noise. We call this "exciting" the room. Here's an example from a kitchen. This
recording is the IR: it's a clean, pure sample of how that room reacts to sound. The convolution
processor then uses the IR to create a new function: its own reverb sound effect that can be
used to treat any new sound. So now your favorite cave, your favorite kitchen, your favorite garbage
can, is ready to reverberate any sound file on the go, in this nifty little digital package. However,
the convolution processor can take more than just real recorded impulse responses. In fact,
it can process any sound into a space for other sounds to reverberate inside. We can manufacture
IRs to create otherworldly effects, like this Plasm Wraith sound does. While I'm not advanced
in the field enough to reverse-engineer the IR that was used in this sound, I was able
to hear the formants in it well enough to create my own IR that mimics it. It sounds like this.
[my recreated IR plays] And when applied to a sample I
found of churning mud, it sounds like this! [my recreated Plasm Wraith sound plays]
It's not a perfect recreation of course, but it is decidedly creepy, and it shows how
this mud sound is now exciting the false room created by my own crafted impulse response.
This is a powerful tool to change the imagined space or source of a sound. If the Plasm Wraith
used just an unedited frothing sound, we'd get that it's made of a viscous gold-like substance,
sure. But adding this convolution reverb to it makes it all the more otherworldly, like
it possesses features or powers beyond the usual scope of enemies in the game. And like all these
sound oddities in Pikmin 3, this sound is a quirk that isn't faithful to the photorealistic style of
Pikmin's visual world, but is clear, recognizable, and charming to the player. I hope these bits of
trivia have proven interesting, and gotten you thinking about the care that goes into game sound
design, no matter where a sound comes from. And a huge thank you to DavoGato, the user and my friend
who recorded the Pikmin 3 footage for this video. And I know convolution reverb can be a bit, well,
convoluted, so I might recommend the Convology XT plugin from the IR recording company Impulse
Record.com as a starting point. It's a free plugin for most digital audio workstations where you can
get a feel for the effectiveness of convolution reverb. I'm not sponsored by Impulse Record,
I'm just a fan of reverb. And with that, I'm Scruffy, and thank you very much for listening!