In Call Of Duty: Infinite Warfare, How Come You Can Hear In Space?
Space sounds cool as a military setting, yet there’s a lot about it that gets in your way as opposed to picking a setting with gravity. One giant problem? You’re not supposed to be able to hear in space — sound waves can’t travel in a vacuum. So how come in that trailer, we heard so much happen in space?
Senior art director Brian Horton admits in a Playstation Blog interview that “the absence of sound would actually be very detrimental,” because being able to hear what’s going on around you is crucial to survival in a battle setting. What’s Infinity Ward’s solution? High-tech space suits.
“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,” Horton explained. “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.”
There’s one other element of space that Horton admits Infinity Ward had to fudge — the fact that moving through it is very slow without a means of propulsion. IW’s solution for that one was a grappling hook to pull yourself great distances in a short amount of time, or to yank a distant enemy closer to you. Horton admits it shouldn’t work as well in real life.
“That grapple mechanic is–for us–pushing toward the boundary of science fiction, but you can still imagine someone engineering it,” Horton said.