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As we continue to move closer towards realistically representing a model of reality in games, so should our worlds react and be influenced by sound and it's effect on these worlds. In Crysis, developer Crytek has made tremendous leaps at providing the player with a realistic sandbox with which to interact with the simulated world around them. In a presentation at the game developers conferance in 2008 Tomas Neumann and Christian Schilling explained their reasoning.

"Ambient sound effects were created by marking areas across the map for ambient sounds, with certain areas overlapping or being inside each other, with levels of priority based on the player’s location. Nature should react to the player,” said Schilling, "and so the ambiance also required dynamic behavior, with bird sounds ending when gunshots are fired."

In a game where everything is tailored towards giving the player an immersive experience in a living breathing world, I think this addition was a masterstroke of understatement and brings a level of interactivity that hasn't been previously experienced.

Audio Lead Christian Schilling went on to explain the basic concept and provide additional background via email:
"Sneaking through nature means you hear: birds, insects, animals, wind, water, materials
So everything: the close and the distant sounds of the ambience.

Firing your gun means you hear:
Birds flapping away and silence.
Silence of course means here: wind, water, materials, but also - and this was the key I believe - distant sounds (distant animals and other noises), we left the close mosquito sounds in as well, which fly in every now and then - because we thought they don't care about gun shots.

So, after firing your gun you do hear close noises like soft wind through the leaves or some random crumbling bark of some tree next to you (the close environment), all rather close and crispy, but also the distant layer of the ambience, warm in the middle frequencies, which may be distant wind, the ocean, distant animals - no matter what animals just distant enough to not know what it is - plus other distant sounds that could foreshadow upcoming events. In Crysis we had several enemy camps here and there in the levels, so you would maybe hear somebody dropping a pan or shutting a door in the distance, roughly coming from the direction of the camp, so you could follow that noise and find the camp.

It was a fairly large amount of work, but we thought: If the player chooses the intelligent way to play - slowly observing and planning before attacking - he would get the benefits of this design."

In this way they have chosen to encourage a sense of involvement with the environment of the game is by giving the ambient soundscape an ear to the sounds the player is making. The level of detail is commendable and has proven to be a forward thinking attempt at further simulating reality through creative audio implementation.

GDC 2008: The Crysis Of Audio

Also See Article: Non-repeating Game Sound Crysis
Also See Article: Non-repetitive Sound Design Crysis