The gamers, strap up for the juicy audio upgrade for Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt by CDPR. From their collaboration with Embody Audio, spatial audio can now be packed into the experience in one price for anybody in the cities of Night City and Novigrad.
So staring at this Immerse Gamepack? Well, basically it’s not your average surround sound simulation. Embody Audio said that it will take multichannel audio from the game and apply a personalized HRTF (head-relative So…some say, camera-based head-tracking and headphone EQ fine-tuned for each game). Translating this into much easier language, the idea was to ensure sounds of gunfire, sounds of swords clashing, and even far-away city “blah-blah” ambience would be perceived by the user as occurring all around them rather than inside their headphones.
Not everyone is bought yet! Some, like Twitter user n050up4u, called it out: “just a driver that downsamples to headphone mix with EQ applied”, which “did not fly for me in previous trials.” Embody Audio shot back, saying, “Our technology is way beyond a regular spatial escape like Dolby Atmos or Windows Sonic,” and even gave skeptical users a link to a free trial (https://embody.co) so they could judge for themselves.
Off-course, the console guys are bummed. Asking, “Let me guess it’s not on the console? 😭😭😭,” NapolesKev94927 echoed the eternal lament of all console players. Embody confirmed the exclusivity of the technology to PC for now. It surely is a bummer for PlayStation and Xbox folks—but at least they teased about “future updates,” so fingers crossed.
Some gamers in the replies were perhaps more psyched at the prospect of game updates than themselves for audio upgrades. Shadowgodkill3 begged for New Game Plus mode for Cyberpunk, whereas others speculated on future DLC that explored the unused life paths (Med Tech, Media, or Law Enforcement, anyone?).
Then Rzero512 just went, “2000 hours in Cyberpunk”, just like that! Embody Audio replied, “Whoa, quite the accomplishment!”
Does that led to, what about this Immerse Gamepack? If you are deep into either one of those games and a little further immersion is what you need, then definitely check out the free trial. But if you’re a little skeptical about the whole spatial audio movement and are on console, then maybe hold on. Either way, great that CDPR is still pushing updates – even if some of us are still searching for that NG+.
For the moment in Night City, the boss. Or loudest, maybe. Or… most directionally accurate? Just go and try not. Your ears; your bills!
