After seeing Warcraft 3 Reforged videos, I realized how much keeping the sounds while updating the visuals help with making the game feel the same, while still feeling like an upgrade.
I’m not even going to mention the outright bad sound effects such as War Wagons plastic arrows, but man, I strongly believe the original sounds are priceless and shouldn’t be changed after 20 years.
Most sound effects were not updated, they were completely changed or removed, which is a completely different thing. Where are the villager death sounds, the civilizations classic lines of some units?
If I’m going deeper into personal opinions, I also dislike the battle sounds (such as melee units attacks), I think it’s “too much” and it feels forced, and not as sharp. I miss the cavalry gallop sound, and I hate the new cavalry movement sound.
Maybe I’m just too involved with music/sound (I get goosebumps hearing music that I like more than the regular person), but still…I would mod it myself if I was sure it is possible.
9 Likes
Everything but the new watch tower/outpost sound is too ‘soft’ and quiet compared to the original.
I’m sorry in advance because I didn’t tested this out, but isn’t the classic soundtrack availabe through the ‘Classic’ option at the soundtrack list from the options menu?
Yep, the music is still great, but I’m talking more about the general sound effects, such as arrows shooting, units/buildings selections sounds, etc 
I would like to see the old campaign voices (in my case in german) back as a mod or even better an official option.
2 Likes
As much as I enjoy the remasters, I just seem to like the original sound of the music better. Also, a lot of the sounds are pretty quiet and very… hard to get used to. (for example for the longest time I thought Mamelukes make no sound when attacking - it’s just so quiet I can’t even hear it over the music!)
I myself am in no way skilled in making mods of any kind (I am only skilled in breaking my games when trying to mod xD), so would someone more skilled than me be able to make this happen?
4 Likes
I made a mod for the original ingame soundtrack. Unfortunately it has 800mb so i cannot publish it as official mod (big file size is because of uncompressed audio files). I also made a mod for the original male/female/cavalry death sounds, but it has to be applied directly to the game files. Maybe i can upload the mods somewhere else. Unit sound modding is (currently) a lot of work because the sounds are encapsulated in a wwise sound bank. The devs confirmed to make sound modding easier in the future.
1 Like
How much is the maximum size you can upload per mod?
The maximum size is 500mb.
3 Likes
Yea I am bit underwhelmed with the music and sound as well. The title music doesn’t have the sense of epicness of the original, it has like the first few notes then it goes in a completely different direction… also the Persian elephants now sound like some old man whining instead of an actual elephant.
When the Definitive Edition games were announced, I really thought they were planning to put an in-game menu toggle for “old sounds” vs. “new sounds,” so we could choose whichever we wanted to on any given day. And even a separate toggle for “old soundtrack” vs. “new soundtrack.” From a nostalgic standpoint, I’d sometimes want to switch to old-school sounds. And as the above indicates, maybe to overcome issues with the new audio.
I realize there may be new units and such, so the old sounds would just be for all the old units and buildings, or things (like gates) that are consistently there across both games.
I actually feel like it’s a snivel 111
It does though, and it’s so lovely imo
But an original soundtrack will be nice
I’m not a fan of the new sound effects either. Thankfully there are game mods available for the original sound effects and music!
A game mod for the original sound effects is now available from @StepS7578 here: https://www.ageofempires.com/mods/details/2397/
StepS also put together a game mod for the original soundtrack here: https://www.ageofempires.com/mods/details/2548/
5 Likes
I’m holding out hope that this will be addressed in the next patch (crossing fingers); bringing it as a menu option. If not, I’ll have to do the mod. The classic soundtrack is punchier and digital, which I like. I’d want to be able to set the music on shuffle so it goes between classic tracks and new ones. But in order to do that, they’d have to normalize the volumes, as the new music is much harder to hear than the old tracks. I wouldn’t want to be constantly having to adjust music volume level while playing the game.
Since the new soundtrack has been exclusively in the game a few months now (gave it some time to shine), and Microsoft has made the new soundtrack purchasable as a standalone product, I feel they may be about to give us the old soundtrack as an option in the next patch. And hopefully old sounds toggleable option, too… though, I’m not needing this as much, personally. I rather enjoy a lot of the remastered audio sounds, as well barracks and archery unit creation sounds. (Wall construction sounds, and arrow sounds still aren’t doing it for me, though.)
1 Like