UI, HUD and Audio

Related: Flight and Combat · Dialogue and Radio · MINOZIS Encounter Design

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1. Visual Language

Two visual languages run through the game:

Language	Where	Look
Dossier	Briefings, the Ledger, debrief text	Typewritten classified pages; confidence grades as stamped tags; redaction bars that lift as grades rise
Log	The prologue cascade, recovered logs, the MNZ-41's own records	Monospaced timestamped lines on black, as in the paradox cascade

The player first meets the Log language in P00 Phase 9. Whenever it reappears, the player is reading the machine.

2. HUD

Standard series HUD (radar, lock, target list, altitude, speed, weapons) with these additions:

Element	Behavior
HUD integrity indicator	A small bracket near the radar that flickers when instruments may be lying; absent on Ace difficulty
Discharge window	When the MNZ-41 fires its emitter: a white flash, 1–2 s of sensor blackout, then a ring around its marker that drains over the window's duration. With the Discharge Timer module, the ring carries a numeric countdown
Load (Empathy display)	When flying as Eirhei: four small meters along the bottom edge, one per pilot (five in M08)
Read overlay	When flying as Asano: emitter anomalies as faint pulses on the radar
Command Picture	When flying as Thorne: a fused tactical map toggle; in Act III it shows the MNZ-41's estimated fuel rung and power priorities
Edge cone	When flying as Marsh: a narrow gun cone and timing pips
Verify	A zoom reticle with identification text: COMBATANT / CIVILIAN / UNKNOWN

3. The Prologue Cockpit

The MNZ-41's COFFIN interface is visually distinct: a 360-degree synthetic panorama with no canopy frame, faint frost at the screen edges as ENSI contacts engage, and a biometric strip (heart rate, stress, hesitation probability) along the left edge. During overrides, the strip turns white and the controls stop responding. After 14:21 the stick carries force feedback against the player's input.

4. Ghost Transmission Subtitles

Tag	Meaning
[OPEN]	Heard on the open channel
CADENCE nn%	Irina's grade of Belyaev's cadence
RECORDING — household archive	Identified playback of real audio
UNGRADED	Irina could not or would not grade it

In M09 the final transmission's cadence figure starts to display and is cut off when Irina switches the classifier off.

5. Audio

The scream

An oscillating tone between 800 and 1,200 Hz, mixed low and felt more than heard: controller rumble, helmet-resonance filtering, occasional bone-conduction-style muffling. Its pitch rises when the aircraft is charging its emitter. With the Scream Bearing module it becomes directional.

The EMP

A pressure drop, a white-noise burst and two seconds of near-silence while the player's sensors are blind. The return of sound marks the opening of the window.

Radio processing

Source	Processing
Squadron	Clean, close
Control / cell	Light compression
Open channel	Wideband noise
POSTHUMUS core	Clean synthetic voice with no breath
POSTHUMUS residue	Belyaev's voice with dropouts and frequency smearing
Borrowed audio	Belyaev's voice with room tone from the original recording: a kitchen, a hallway

Music direction

Context	Direction
Prologue	No score until 14:20; a single sustained low string under the abort; silence at 14:22:37
Squadron missions	Driving, percussive, with a recurring four-note motif for the squadron
MINOZIS encounters	Score drops out when the aircraft is present; the scream replaces it
Althéa	A high, slow choral line that enters with the illumination column
Finale	The squadron motif and Althéa's line meet in Phase 2; everything stops for the loop; a single unaccompanied melody after the crash, in a Yuktobanian folk mode
Epilogue circle	Asano sings, unaccompanied, the song from 2028

Silence

Silence is a tool. Interlude I has no music. The cascade has no sound. The loop in M09 is silent except for the gun.