It was an invitation to a musical journey, and if you look at my work, that’s what I’m trying to do now. When I was playing games by The Bitmap Brothers and Team 17, the texture of the sounds meant video game music was unique back then. “Chris Huelsbeck, David Whitaker and all of these other composers really made me. “When the Amiga came out and I played Shadow of the Beast, I went to my father and told him he can throw out his CD player because computers are much better than that and make music in real-time!” Deriviere explains. No game sounded the game, and technological advancements such as the SIP chip in the C64 allowed video game music to constantly evolve. In the ‘80s and early ‘90s before CD-quality audio, composers only had a few channels at their disposal, and composers all had their unique ways of bypassing the technical limitations of the hardware they worked with. The first music that Deriviere ever composed was on a Commodore 64, back when music had to be coded into the games it was written for. He’s always been interested in the technical aspects of video games, as well as the creative elements. We wanted the music to follow the empowerment of the character.”Īlong with his learnings from attending the Conservatory of Nice in France and Berklee College of Music when he was younger, Derievere’s unique approach to composition is inspired by the music in the games he grew up with. “It feels more like superhero towards the end. “The vision of the creative director was ‘lose control, empower yourself and gain control.’ That’s the ark of the player,” Deriviere says. The string sessions were mixed by John Kurlander (Lord of the Rings), synth was handled by Jerome Devoise (Archive) and mastered by Shawn Hatfield (Amon Tobin). What starts as fairly minimal synth and a couple of string instruments in the game’s early parkour segments eventually evolve into the full might of the London Contemporary Orchestra later in. As you power up the game’s protagonist, Aiden, with new skills, abilities and tools such as the grappling hook and the paraglider, you’ll start noticing changes to the music. The music changes as you progress through the game too. This makes listening to Dying Light 2’s soundtrack release a completely different experience from hearing the music in-game. It’s not about what players hear, but how and why they hear it. His approach to video game composition has always been about much more than simply scoring the game. When you consider Deriviere has been writing music for video games for nearly 20 years, the amount of time needed to nail these music systems is telling of how complex they can be. It’s madness what we did on Dying Light 2. “I had to hire staff, not just in my studio to spread the systems all over the place, but also to test everything. “It’s much more like, okay, how do we approach the game, and how do we debug it and make sure the music works the way we want it to work. “This is going to sound weird, but the composition is the fastest and easiest part,” Deriviere tells me over a video call. Not just scoring the game’s soundtrack, but creating, testing and implementing interactive music systems for the game that control how players experience his music depending on their actions. If you’re wondering how this Bafta nominee has managed to amass so many hours of playtime into Dying Light 2 around his other projects, it’s because Deriviere spent the last three years of his life working on it.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |