The atmosphere of Wanting Glass Studios’ Thief video games was with out evaluate. Eric Brosius and everybody else who contributed to their soundscapes knocked it out of the park. The echoing tunnels, the non secular chants, the distant buzz of business, the whine of electrical coils, the inexplicable all-permeating hum within the darkness, and that one banging DJ Shadow-esque tune that blares if you enter the Downwind Guild. It is all excellent.
And now I’ve found it is all on YouTube, and has been looped. Among the movies are shorter, like one which takes the cutscene music from the intro to the Assassins degree (opens in new tab) of Thief: The Darkish Venture, which Garrett usually narrates over, and loops it earlier than that half so we will hear it separate from the voiceover. That solely goes for two-and-a-half minutes. For those who desire the atmosphere of Thief 2, here is two of its atmospheric audio information, s01mel1.wav and s01mel2.wav, looped for an hour (opens in new tab).
YouTubers have gone additional than that, after all. Which is why I’ve spent a big chunk of as we speak listening to a somber 10-hour loop of the Horn of Quintus (opens in new tab) from Down within the Bonehoard.
For those who’re not accustomed to the 10-hour pattern, again in 2011 when YouTube first expanded its video-duration restrict the web briefly went wild for a 10-hour loop of Nyan Cat. Now you possibly can hearken to hours and hours of something, together with the tinny Portal radio model of Nonetheless Alive (opens in new tab), and the Tristram theme from Diablo (opens in new tab).
As a result of I am simply distracted and have tinnitus, I typically play instrumental music whereas I work. Immediately, my copy of Mogwai’s rating for Les Revenants has gone unheard. As an alternative, I have been listening to an hour-long loop of loloop2.wav (opens in new tab), which I consider is the noise of these Tesla-coil electrical generator issues within the haunted mines underneath Cragscleft Jail, and a 10-hour loop of the ambient sounds and muttering guard (opens in new tab) from Thief 2’s Working Interference mission.
I am a bit involved concerning the potential long-term unwanted effects of this. What if I begin reciting cynical monologues to myself or crouch-walking all over the place I am going?
If you would like to know one thing extra sensible about Thief’s audio, YouTube might help there as properly. The Python Blue channel has been excavating a few of its sources, discovering the origin of varied noises sampled in Thief: The Darkish Venture among the many presets of the Korg M1 synthesizer’s Digital Studio Know-how software program (opens in new tab), in addition to the Earshot SFX sound impact library and different sources (opens in new tab), together with Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki’s Stabat Mater (opens in new tab), which supplied among the choral chanting, and a haunting observe from 2001: A House Odyssey known as Lux Aeterna. Which, naturally sufficient, you could find an hour-long loop of on YouTube.