Starcraft 2 soundscape very disappointing

I think this has been the same thoughts as the community since they announced the Zerg trailer. SC2 soundscape seems to have gone downhill since then.

Watching the youtube beta movies, it just feels like noise, lots of it. When it's a zerg base, you hear a lot of sloshing noise. If it's a terran, you hear a lot of mechanical noise. None of which are distinct or anything.

In SC1, you could hear the welding tools of SCVs, the gnawing of drones, the weird noise of probes. While Protoss still has that probe sound, terran and zerg have seemingly "improved" to just mechanized or organic noise.

This is further added onto the fact that Marines now have a generic machine gun noise, not the cool 50 cal thunder from SC1. Considering the new marines have a larger muzzle flash, one can imagine a much better sounding gun than what they have now.

Also lets not talk about Hydralisks, which have lost their distinct sound and just sound like they're flinging rocks. Zerlings sound like seagulls still. Roaches just have a sloshing noise and Ovies have lost their Elephant roar. It's now more like a bored grunt as if it doesn't want to be in the game.

Siege tanks, the once great sounding deployment which put fear into people, now have really no distinct sound. Their once unique attack sound "pop, pop" and the artillery strike sound is now replaced with boring and generic cannon fire. Even Vikings have a boring sound, just another MP5 like machine gun, or rockets that sound the same as regular rockets (not the crazy rockets from SC1, which had a weird radar like ping every time)

I understand sound is the last thing to be worked on, but seriously, I really hope these are placeholders.

I agree but I think it goes beyond the soundscape.
The music is disappointing.
The speech is really silly, very monotonous.

The music and speech seem fine to me (I'm assuming voice acting for main characters will be more exciting in the campaign etc.)

I agree that the sound effects for the game in general, though, are very disappointing. I too hope that there are a LOT of placeholders currently in the game. Right now the game looks great, but sounds average.

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Originally Posted by Wankey

Also lets not talk about Hydralisks, which have lost their distinct sound and just sound like they're flinging rocks.

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To be fair to Hydras, their SC1 attack sound effect and animation was from a time when they were supposed to be spitting acid, I believe. Only later did they change the lore to shooting spines instead of acid, but the animation and sound effects stayed the same. :]

The music is great. All other sounds are monkey hurlage.

Definitely game looks amazing. Art team has really done a great job (except for Carrier *ahem*) The sound team... are sleeping at the wheel.

Also I don't know why Hydralisks are spitting spines. You need ammunition for spines, acid you can just keep making.

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Originally Posted by Wankey

Also I don't know why Hydralisks are spitting spines. You need ammunition for spines, acid you can just keep making.

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Well, they apparently have hundreds of them in their upper carapace, and I imagine they'd grow back like a shark's teeth :p.

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Originally Posted by Wankey

Also I don't know why Hydralisks are spitting spines. You need ammunition for spines, acid you can just keep making.

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Lore-wise hydras have been spitting spines since SC1 IMO the problem right now is the attack animation and sound effect. According to SC1 manual hydra's spines are shot with enough force to pierce through several layers of steel in the BC's armor, but the actual animations shows the spines being fired in a parabolic arc and that doesn't seem really capable of hurting anything at all.
I also agree that the sound needs to be reworked thay might be trying to improve realism but it's better when each unit has an iconic sound effect.

I'm hoping a lot of the sound is filler. A lot of the actual unit voices are lame IMO. I prefer Sc1's unit voices by FAR. There's a few that are actually good -- but not enough. And their actual scripts are terrible.

Music is generally great to excellent.

Has anyone tried posting this complaint at the source? i.e. the bnet beta forums? This might get their attention more there, and Blizzard might act more quickly based on that.

Overall I agree with the sound sentiment: The zealots have lost their clinking-sword type zealot attack. Dark templar have their laser-blade sounds done perfectly, but zealots need to be reworked.

Also, the tanks need more depth to the explosion sound - it sounds too much like hitting a tin can for some reason. Also, hydralisks need a major rework, maybe not like SC1 sounds but if they wanna improve it, maybe give the impact of the spines a sound if they wanna keep the "pfft" of the spines - also, freaking change that flying mouse pointer to an actual sharp projectile or a series of them!!