Hello, Guardians. I thought I'd share some of my ideas for improving Destiny through sound and certain visual effects/changes. I'm not delving into gameplay here. (posted this on reddit too) MARS First up, the terrain. I was patrolling Mars and identified a problem I've had with Destiny from day one. It's to do with how the ground feels like. Most of Mars is supposed to be this sandy, dune-desert-type terrain, yet the ground is hard. The footstep sound effect sounds like steps on concrete. How about adding a soft, sandy sound, and complementing that with a puff of dust particle effect, to obscure the fact that Guardians' feet don't sink. Speaking of dust, more dust could be added overall. Sparrows should raise up dustclouds in their wake. We could even have view-obscuring sandstorms on Mars. That could work as gameplay element as well, battling through public events in a passing sandstorm. Battlefield: Bad Company had lots of dust, and it was awesome, and made the battles more unpredictable. FOOTSTEPS & FOLIAGE Footsteps sound effects work better on the other planets, but... everything seems a bit too solid. Perhaps add some random twigs breaking, bits of gravel crunching under your feet. Dragging & grinding sounds & when you're gliding off rocky slopes - same for metal surfaces etc. Also, when we run through tall grass, bushes, or the gorgeous weird flowers of Venus, we should feel them. That's the world of Destiny brushing up against our legs! Ideally, I'd want to smell it, taste it and touch it... but hearing it is a start. Maybe the existing foley-type effects should be more prominent in the mix, to enhance the feeling of presence. (BTW, running in water in Destiny sounds great!) SOUNDSCAPES The explorable worlds of Destiny are very beautiful, but they do feel kind of lifeless. I remember hearing something about Bungie not being able to add more wildlife due to memory restrictions or somesuch. But what about adding SOUNDS of life? *On Venus we could hear the occasional cries of the pterodactyl-things circling above us. We could hear (space)frogs, (space)loons and (space)crickets - after the gunfire subsides, of course. *Cosmodrome could have distant eagle cries at high noon, wolves howling at night, crows cawing. A single cicada every once in a while. In caves, bats squeeking. Wings flapping as they fly away. *No animals on the Moon, obviously, but: Bursts of beeps and electronic whistles, from the various machines scattered about. Forgotten lonely little computers trying to talk to each other, looking for a connection. Conversations that have been slowly going on for 200 years. (I got a little carried away there.) *Mars could have giant Cabal warhorns bellowing in the distance. Desert insects. One reason I believe Destiny could sound so much better is the Halloween pumpkin head consumable. Those hellish shrieks and wolf howls echoing in the distance added so much atmosphere... even if they were silly. CHAT AUDIO One more thing. I've always hoped someone would do realtime-processed chat audio in a videogame. I feel it would help immersion. The idea is that whenever your teammate speaks to you, it would be processed to sound like you're hearing it through a spacey radio system. Adding pops and electronic beeps before and after your "bit of dialogue", applying compression, a clarifying EQ, and then applying a stylish filter over the whole thing. This would apply delay, of course, but might not be detrimental to legibility because of the compression/expansion. It should be an option for those of us who enjoy a degree of roleplaying in our videogame. And - why isn't this done for most games?? SPARROW CAMERA Sparrows go fast, but because of the high camera angle, it doesn't feel like it. We know this from driving games: a higher 3rd person camera view is good for seeing your environment, but it's duller. The lower the camera gets, the faster it feels you're going - you get the best feeling for speed when the camera is at wheel-level in 1st person mode. Destiny's Sparrow camera angle isn't very thrilling. Maybe the camera should drop down closer to the Sparrow when we boost, to let us feel the speed? Or let us adjust the camera from the options?