This philosophy was on the back of my mind as I wrote, and you guys will have to let me know if it works as well as I hope it does. In fact, I believe thematic scoring in video games has the potential to be even more effective than in film. They don’t just hear a cue once, but multiple times, creating the ideal environment for threading musical arcs across the story.
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I felt that the music, too, should adapt with them, so I wrote a thematic score that develops the melodies as the player progresses, introducing the kind of melodic development common for film and TV scores, but rarely (if ever) found in video games.Ĭompared to a film or TV show, a video game audience has a better chance of internalizing the score. Unlike most games, these characters are rich, deep, with personal arcs that evolve over the game. (Click image above for full-res panoramic.)Īs I composed, I focused on the story and the characters, the reasons I was first drawn to Dark Void. Themes and instrumental colors flooded my imagination and I wrote the entire 100-minute score to Dark Void in about 3 weeks.
This was the inspirational breakthrough I needed. (Conducting strings while watching stills from the game.) I decided to stop worrying about hitting specific moments or moods and set out to simply write music to rival the grandeur and mystery of those images. All I had to inspire me were several hundred production sketches that depicted the characters, environments, weapons and technology of the world, and a detailed script. I had no completed levels to play, or even remotely finished cinematics to watch. I realized quickly that scoring games is a different experience. I visualize the finished effects, refined edits and completed sound design and compose music that will fill all the empty gaps and hit all the right emotional beats. When I watch a rough cut of a film or TV episode that I’m about to score, I can imagine what the final product will look and sound like.
The differences between scoring film / TV and video games became glaringly obvious in my first few days of writing Dark Void, back in the Fall of 2008.
All session photography by Andrew Craig.) (Click image above for full-res panoramic. I was very fortunate to work with so many talented artists and producers, who would indulge me in creating a score ten times more complex than the one they had asked for. We put our heads together and figured out how it could be done. They said this was impossible, and thus, I knew we were on the right track. I sat down with the development team at Airtight Games and described to them my musical aspirations. I wanted the music to constantly adapt, as if it were being written specifically for the gamer, with virtually no repetition whatsoever. As an avid life-long gamer, I knew what I wanted to hear: a swashbuckling orchestral score in keeping with the grand story. Having spent the first several years of my musical career scoring television and films, I approached writing for an interactive medium with no previous models in mind. Exactly twenty years later, Capcom would give me that chance, offering me the score to Dark Void. I dreamt of one day creating my own video game score, one that could grow past the limitations of 8-bit hardware and match the scope and breadth of the orchestral film scores I also adored. Those catchy melodies and bold arrangements, realized in glorious sine wave synthesis, were among my first musical influences. I battled mechanized evil robots and saved the day as the curiously bombastic 8-bit music seeped into my imagination. MODERATE GAME PLOT SPOILERS AHEAD: When I was a kid, I was enthralled with Capcom’s Mega Man II.
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DARK VOID, the first video game I’ve ever scored, is released today for X-Box, PS3 and PC!
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