Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/954507
www.postmagazine.com 33 POST MARCH 2018 AUDIO FOR GAMES instance, there are atmospheres in the game, which dictate things like weather, time of day and other conditions. Blake asked that each atmosphere have an emotive theme. "So 'fog' became 'mysterious fog.' Cris would then create music that beautifully captures this 'mysterious fog' feel and the other developers were aligned on which direction to take their content. It may seem fairly obvious from a mu- sic perspective, but other departments don't neces- sarily work from an emotionally-driven mindset. It's been a great way to bring the music and the visuals closer together," says Blake. Running with the 'technologically less advanced' idea, Velasco's early concept for the City Music was that the people of Dauntless may have discovered an old cache of written music but they were unsure of how to play it. "Maybe they even figured it out, but they had the music upside down the whole time," says Velasco, who wrote a very Baroque-sounding piece using the hang drum and cimbalom palette, but then reversed all of the notes so that the compo- sition was played backward. "I actually thought it was a pretty cool sound, but ultimately, it was decided to be the wrong aesthetic for the game." For a score that's two years in the making, evo- lution seems inevitable, especially when the game was open to extensive Alpha testing. "The score retained the intent and instrumentation of what we started out with, however, the tracks have gotten slightly more 'epic' sounding — a conscious decision that was slowly made over time due to feedback we've received from fans," notes Velasco. A large portion of Dauntless gameplay takes place in heavy combat. The score needed to differentiate between the various monsters, and staying with the hang drum/cimbalom/gamelan palette made that tricky to achieve. The score also needed to communicate a monster's level of aggression. When they needed to increase the in- tensity, Velasco changed time signatures to match the shift in the monster's state. "This allowed Cris to create a new vibe for these pieces, giving him a cleaner slate to start from and giving the player a sense that things were noticeably different when the track changed," says Blake. The most challenging set of tracks to create were the 'radiant' pieces — those that played in con- junction with the game's light-based elements like teleportation, laser-type effects and refraction of light. This is the most sci-fi aspect of the game and the team wanted to avoid sci-fi tropes that would go against the concept of having limited technolo- gy. "We tried different instrumentation, starting with more 'on the nose' sounds (namely, theremin). It took a few iterations but we ended up with a more atmospheric and mysterious direction utilizing a solo female vocalist — something we'd deliberately avoided elsewhere. With this direction, the radiant energy felt more like a mysterious and unknown power rather than a physical and understood technology, which worked perfectly in our game's world," concludes Blake. WARHAMMER: VERMINTIDE 2 For Fatshark's 2015 release Warhammer: End Times — Vermintide, composer Jesper Kyd created a score that sounded like the enemies were playing the music. It sounded dark, gritty, scary and broken. "The game takes places in the Middle Ages. It's a fantasy game but it's a very grim and realistic fan- tasy world so orchestra music wasn't suitable. We needed something that would add realism to the world. I chose instruments that were available back then. However, they're performed in non-traditional ways that make the score aggressive and unique; it's more inspired by the horror genre than pleasant Middle Ages folk music," says Kyd. Warhammer: Vermintide 2, released this month, introduces a new enemy faction, Chaos Norsca. Audio director David Wahlund called on composer Kyd to write tracks that would reinforce the Chaos tribe's Viking characteristics. Kyd chose Viking war-style drums and throat singing that incorpo- rates Scandinavian phrases. "I have never written a Viking-inspired score before so that was a unique opportunity for me. I enjoyed tapping into my Scandinavian roots, exploring the ancient tribal music and dark magic fantasy elements as well as evolving the raw acoustic soundscape we devel- oped for the first game," Kyd says. In Vermintide 2, the music changes often to reflect the dynamic range of enemies. The score not only needed to aid immersion, it also had to inform the player of what he or she is up against. "The dif- ferent horde enemies and boss battles all have their own unique musical themes. Also, when something happens to the player, if he or she is in danger or the last man standing, we have different music for that as well," says Wahlund. Kyd says he spent a lot of time playing the game and coming up with suggestions and ideas for where the music should play in the game's levels. "When it comes to combat music, terror music for the enemy hordes and other more gameplay-trig- gered music, we spend more time talking in-depth about these tracks," he explains. During combat gameplay, it's often a challenge to get the music and sound effects to work together. There are chaotic mobs of monsters, melee sounds and impacts, and pounding music all vying for the same sonic space. "In the first game, we asked Jesper to produce his music in a certain frequency spectrum so that all our other sounds would fit into the mix," says Wahlund. "This time around, we scrapped that idea as we wanted a more bombastic drum style. But, we made the horde (enemy faction) music a bit more simplistic using almost only drums and less melody. We only go epic on special occa- sions. I think we found a nice balance in the end." PLAYERUNKNOWN'S BATTLEGROUNDS It's like the video game version of Hunger Games, only quicker. PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) is considered to be the defining game of this PvP genre that's dubbed 'battle royale.' The premise: Upwards of one hun- dred players are dropped onto an island where Kyd