A first-of-its-kind action RPG from Sanzaru Games,
Asgard’s Wrath 2 (
AW2) pushes the boundaries of immersive experiences. The team harnessed the power of Meta Quest 3 to deliver over 700 unique haptic effects, creating a world that players can truly feel. We sat down with Sanzaru Audio Lead Jared Bartlett and Audio Programmer Skylar Chen to discuss the unique challenges and triumphs of integrating haptics and sound in
AW2.
The Haptic Challenge
Filled with cinematic moments and intense combat, AW2 required haptics to sell the massive scale of the world. However, achieving a strong correlation between audio and haptics, at such a large scale, was a huge challenge. “We knew that we wanted a tight sync between audio and haptics, but we didn’t have out-of-the-box tools to achieve this with our combination of UE4 and FMOD,” Bartlett explains. For him, haptic design has traditionally been a very time consuming task, and creating custom effects across such a large and diverse range of events was too costly. Also, haptics had been implemented by various disciplines in the past, often leading to inconsistencies in the quality and style of the output.
The Power of Meta Haptics Studio
Sanzaru turned to
Meta Haptics Studio, which proved to be a game-changer, enabling them to unify haptics development under the audio team and move incredibly quickly at a late stage of development. “Creating assets from Haptics Studio is very fast due to being able to bulk import our existing audio effects,” says Bartlett. “We primarily relied on the analysis tools provided by Haptics Studio, minimizing manual adjustments and focusing on adding emphasis points where necessary. Typically, we would conduct a haptics pass once the audio was finalized. This approach allowed us to quickly identify and add the required haptic effects to creatures, cinematics, and more in a single pass, leveraging the source assets we had already created.”
To scale up the haptics work, Sanzaru needed to link haptics playback to audio playback. Typically, developers would turn to Haptics SDK for this task, but at the time of development the Unreal SDK wasn’t yet ready. So Chen developed a system that directly tied the playback of a haptics file to the audio event, allowing the sound designers to continue with their usual implementation process.
“We set up this system in middleware, piping the haptics PCM data directly through FMOD, which gave us the ability to control haptics using the same audio parameters,” explains Chen. "The system also automatically sent any local parameter values used on audio to the haptics event. For instance, with Alvilda’s bow, we could synchronize the intensity of the pulled string sound effect and the haptic using the same parameter.”
The end result is a game with over 700 audio-driven haptic assets that exceeded the team’s expectations. “The full-frequency haptics and feel of the Quest 3 controllers really increased immersion,” Bartlett says. “Especially in big cinematic moments, the haptics became the ‘sub’ and really glued things together.”
Standout Haptic Moments
When asked for his top picks for haptics in AW2, Bartlett points to the cinematic moment when Surtur rises up from the ground and pulls a giant sword out of a wall. He also highlights the weapons, particularly Alvilda’s Bow and Cyrene’s Harp, where haptics parameters are directly tied to audio parameters. Also on his list is the Sakhmet Bruiser battle at the end of Lair Of Scorpion Brood, where the feel of Bruiser’s footsteps provides a significant contrast to the character movement. However, Bartlett says, “We needed to be careful to not over use haptics features in these sections because, honestly, it was just so fun to feel the response of the controllers tied so tightly to audio that the team of sound designers all worked so hard to craft.”
Harnessing Haptic Feedback
While the journey to integrate haptics in AW2 was filled with unique challenges, the end result is a game that truly immerses the player in a new world. The success of the haptic design in AW2 is testament to the creativity of the developers and designers behind it. We hope their story inspires other developers and designers looking to enhance their immersive experiences to give Meta Haptics Studio a try.
Try Asgard's Wrath 2 Haptics