If, like us, your first question after watching the spectacle-laden campaign footage (above) for Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare was ‘how can we hear all these explosions and gunfire in a place that has no sound?’, you’re in luck – Infinity Ward has revealed a “very plausible” explanation for why such a thing is possible in their game.
Speaking on Sony’s PlayStation Blog, senior art director for Infinite Warfare Brian Horton said:
So we did some research to see if we could simulate sound in space, because in military application the absence of sound would actually be very detrimental. You need that feedback — explosions, bullets whizzing by you — to know how to react. And it matters as a player too.
In the game, there’s a way your suit can simulate those sounds and impacts through photons so that you have a tactical awareness of your environment. We’ve dampened the sound a little, but it’s still there to make sure the player has a good time. This is actually not science fiction either — it’s actually very plausible.
Likewise, Horton continues to detail how the development team considered the potential difficulty a soldier would have trying to fight in a zero gravity environment with conventional weaponry, which led to the creation of the grappling hook and gadgets such as the Seeker Grenade, which comes equipped with its own propellant.
You start to think, zero gravity is slow to move around in, so I’m going to need something that will allow me to get through this space quickly — and that’s where the grappling hook came from. I can chose a location and zip to it or I can use it to grab an enemy and pull them towards me. That grapple mechanic is — for us — pushing toward the boundary of science fiction, but you can still imagine someone engineering it.
Regular grenades can be a little challenging in zero gravity, so we created a seeker grenade. When you throw the grenade it has its own weapon propellant which zooms towards the target and blows it up. We have adapted some of those classic weapons, like grenades, for the environment.
For more details on the game’s development process and the challenges faced, you can read the full interview by clicking here.
Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare launches November 4 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC.
