News Gran Turismo 5’s engine sounds are ‘too real’ says Yamauchi

One of the most commonly cited criticisms towards the fabled Gran Turismo series is its lacklustre engine sounds. I'm inclined to agree – compared to Forza Motorsport 4, Gran Turismo's engine sounds have always sounded like dying Dyson vacuum cleaners.

Indeed, it's baffling that, after five iterations spanning nearly 15 years, not to mention Polyphony's stringent strive for perfection, the developers of the 'real driving simulator' have continually failed to get the engine sounds right, despite Polyphony's claims that the in-game audio was recorded directly from the real life cars.

GT Planet touched on the subject in a recent interview with the father of Gran Turismo, Kazunori Yamauchi. Here's what he had to say on the matter:

"My perspective is that the sounds in Gran Turismo are just too real. With the recording method we use, we use a dyno and put the load on, and the sound we produce is just too accurate. I think it would be a good thing to sort of design the sound a little bit, and so that is something I would like to challenge ourselves with in the future.

What I find is that one of our themes with Gran Turismo is to create something that is real; that is what our team is focused on, but that can be an issue sometimes as well. If we see something in front of us, we try to reproduce that very accurately, and that tendency is getting stronger.

But, I think we maybe need to make things sexier sometimes, and I think that is something the Gran Turismo team might need to work on. It could also be because our team is growing in number, which could be one of our barriers to that goal."

You can read the rest of GT Planet's insightful interview here.

Declaring that Gran Turismo 5's engine sounds are "too real" sounds a tad delusional on Kaz's part, although it's possible that this statement might have been lost in translation.

Nevertheless, it's encouraging to see that Polyphony are at least acknowledging that the sterile engine sounds need some serious improvement. Here's hoping this long-standing issue finally gets resolved in Gran Turismo 6, as it's a necessary step if Gran Turismo has any hope of catching up with the competition.

Log in with:

Please login to comment

0 Comments

Inline Feedbacks

View all comments