[2022] The sound design overall and diversity of gun sounds in Destiny is awesome. So why do all the sparrows sound the same? Would be nice if they had different engine sounds.

They all sound the same no matter what they look like. This is a bummer. I want my Ravager's Ride and making clanking engine noises like the Reaver ship in "Serenity". I want my Burnout sounding like Ghost Rider's motorcycle. I want my Blacklight Razor sounding like a light cycle from "Tron". I love ripping around my sparrows but it kinda takes you out of it when they all sound the same.

Edit: I was thinking over the night and while it's not really feasible to go back and add different sounds to individual sparrows, maybe come up with 4 different engine sounds ranging from a speed demon type sound down to a low, throaty muscle car one and then put a slot on the sparrows where you choose from those 4 like we chose horns in D1.

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Originally posted by unicorn_defender

Sorry for the late reply but I finally got around to checking it out and even tested a few more weapons and you’re right! I’m really surprised I never noticed just how varied the sound design is on the weapons. Very impressive!

Sound designer at Bungie here. You all have good ears and observation skills. Destiny is a shooter primarily and therefore guns will get more love than any other sandbox element that releases regularly (abilities are up there too, except they are so rare, it's easy to give them all the love they need).

That's why we do fresh reloads, ads, readys and gunfire for all new, fresh weapons that call for it. Sparrows on the other hand, are a bit more of a MTX item that doesn't change in function barely if it all, and the iconic sound of it is beloved and familiar. It WOULD be nice to have bandwidth to do unique sounds for them, but there is so much more important work and hell - we just started supporting emotes at a larger scale just last year, sort of. And that's because those are fun and unique and really call for sfx at times.

But in terms of discussion of the assets for sparrows. The truth is that if they were simpler (like spawn FX, which we support because they're a simple 1-shot asset) we would probably support them a bit more. Kind of like the mini sparrow, we do it when we just really really see an opportunity, and even then, it's a simple pitch change because of the model. But the reality is that yes, the sparrow is super complex. Just listen to the way the modulation changes based on speed, turn angle, and elevation from the floor. Accounting for all of that while making so many assets is just way too much work for the payoff and the bandwidth available to the team!

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Revision Zero is such a sick weapon

Not the most esthetically pleasing but the sound design of this gun is on another level man! Easily the best sounding gun ever, including the other FPS games I've played.