Imagine an epic in-game moment like dueling a dragon atop snow-covered vistas… only to have the dragon open its mighty jowls and let out a sound like a quacking duck.

Audio can be one of the most crucial elements of making a world like Skyrim’s the most immersive it can be. Thankfully, Bethesda Game Studios has a team that ensures your ears, not just your eyes, believe you’re truly inhabiting the frozen north of Tamriel, be it the muffled sound of footsteps in the snow to the powerful roar of a ferocious dragon.

Mark Lampert has been at Bethesda Game Studios for over 15 years, first working on The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion as a sound designer. Now as Audio Director for the studio, Lampert leads the sound design team, whose job it is to populate Bethesda Game Studios’ worlds with audio elements – including everything from sound effects to voice acting to working with composers behind the games’ original scores.

“I was always into two things from a young age: PC gaming and music,” says Lampert, who played guitar since he was seven years old – and more recently, has taken up drumming. “I dabbled a lot with composition and recording with friends, and at university I went through an excellent four-year program for music production and engineering.”

Upon graduating, Lampert received a tip that a game studio in Austin was looking to hire a contract recordist – an idea that just clicked in his head. “Up to that point, I’d never even considered marrying the two fields of audio and games so it was an ‘ah-ha’ moment.”

Sounds from Another World

Set in a world of epic fantasy, Skyrim presents a special challenge for creatives in sound design like Lampert. After all, things like magic and mythical beast don’t exist in our world, so how would you record them? Thinking back, Lampert recalls the task of creating a dragon’s fiery roar for Skyrim’s official trailer.

“I was intimidated when I was working on that because I didn’t know what to do, and it’s this crucial moment right smack in the middle of a shot and just as the music is coming to crescendo,” Lampert says. “I was just trying random stuff from our libraries, searching for anything with the tag ‘scream’ in its description.”

With some clever audio engineering, a solution presented itself. “There are five or six layers to that scream, including somewhat obvious things like a flamethrower and some big, low-end rumbles, but the two elements that really make it chilling are a recording of children screaming as they go down a roller coaster and then a medieval army doing a war cry,” Lampert explains.

“The rollercoaster kids are pitched way, way up and then time-stretched to where it sounds like this hideous, tortured shriek, and then the army provides the power. That particular scream in the trailer then became the basis for all of the many variations that you hear in-game. That’s often the case: early versions of things we try out that worked well or that we simply get used to end up becoming the foundation of what’s to come. It happens organically like that and you can’t plan it. I like that unpredictability.”

The sound design team at Bethesda Game Studios doesn’t just concentrate on the bombast – every little sound that makes their worlds seems real must be considered. From swords clanging against shields to wind blowing across the grass, it’s a daunting mission Lampert and the team handle by following a general practice at the studio: seeing how something works by getting it in a playable state early on.

“This is especially true when working on weapons or anything else that’s intended to be intense and with short duration,” says Lampert. “Don’t overthink it, just get it into the game and get it testable; that will show you what to adjust or even if you should just start again fresh. Finding out that your first version was garbage is still progress.”

Giving Skyrim a Voice

Sometimes, the recording subjects are people themselves, which adds a whole other layer to sound design. Lampert recalls a trip to Paris to record voiceover with the late Max von Sydow, who played Esbern in Skyrim. “I was in Paris maybe 20 hours in total, but I like it for how quickly he brought such a great character (and voiceover for the first trailer) to the whole game. He’d been in a ton of films of all kinds across many decades and I really respected that he was still willing to take a chance in a video game - something he’d never done before.”

“Just after we met, he says, ‘Mark, you’ll have to explain to me how this will work, as I’ve never done any of this’” quotes Lampert, mimicking the motion of holding a controller and twiddling his thumbs. “And of course, he was nice as can be, a total pro, and made Esbern a great character.”

Another favorite among lines implemented into Skyrim by Lampert is none other than the unexpected meme classic, “I used to be an adventurer like you, then I took an arrow in the knee.” “It’s not even the line itself, but rather that it’s such a great example of how the unintended frequency of the line’s use in the game spiraled out into this whole other organic phenomenon,“ explains Lampert. “Another good one is Wes Johnson as the Imperial guard barking, ‘Stop! You violated the law!’ You hear that one a lot and so it’s kind of synonymous with the game.”

Settling the Score

Of course, the final piece of the pie is the game’s music. A lot of work goes into organically implementing the tracks into Skyrim’s many scenes, adding one more layer of audio immersion that makes Skyrim a place you don’t just see or feel, but hear as well.

A decade later, the Skyrim community still returns to Tamriel’s frozen north to take in its sights and sounds. References to lines like “Do you get to the Cloud District very often?” persist in memes and fan forums, not to mention covers of Skyrim’s music that carry on to this very day. Even a decade since the game’s release, students from the University of Melbourne Symphony Orchestra banded together this year to create an impressive rendition of “Dragonborn” even without all being in the same room:

We’ll be celebrating Skyrim’s sounds ourselves with the official Skyrim 10th Anniversary Concert, kicking off November 11 at 2PM Eastern featuring the London Symphony Orchestra and London Voices. Be sure to join us as we celebrate not just the game’s music, but the community who have also helped make Skyrim the game it is today.

From art to animation to writing to sound, Skyrim is not just the result of a multi-talented team at Bethesda Game Studios but a product of the passion the community brings to the game. Think about it, how else could a video released in 2021 of a fan recreating in-game foley sounds with household objects exist otherwise?