John Debney breathes orchestral flames into Lair

While it isn’t uncommon for real world actors and actresses to lend their hand at video game development, other Hollywood talents are also migrating to the gaming industry as well – one area of which, aside from voice casting, is music scoring. Video games these days get a bit of the “epic soundtrack” treatment too. And for a game like Lair (dungeons, dragons, air-based war campaigns, and all) you should expect nothing less of a soundtrack that could compete with that of Peter Jackson‘s “Lord of the Rings” movie trilogy.

John Debney of “Sin City” and “The Passion of the Christ” fame had an interview with IGN of what it was like bagging the role of music composer for Factor 5‘s dragon flight title. After sitting down with the Sony creative team, he had this to say:

I was really struck by the idea that they had, which was to create music that was really very cinematic in approach… They were also interested in creating very specific themes for the different characters. So, in a way, it was very much like doing a film for me in that I created themes and then once those themes were approved sort of extrapolating from them and going from there.

To give you an idea of how massive and ambitious the project was, Debney notes that they had eight full CDs to work with. “We recorded for three days in London at Abbey Road Studios with a 90-piece orchestra,” he continues. The creators of Lair were trying to achieve something new in terms of integrating music into the game – an important aspect of which is getting themes to flow from one to the other as the game progresses. As certain moments in the game will suddenly shift, the music has to fit into that, sometimes requiring a 4-minute track to change in theme after only 2-minutes.

Apparently, dragons don’t just breather fire, they sing quite well too. Click the “Read” link below to check out the full interview with John Debney.

While it isn’t uncommon for real world actors and actresses to lend their hand at video game development, other Hollywood talents are also migrating to the gaming industry as well – one area of which, aside from voice casting, is music scoring. Video games these days get a bit of the “epic soundtrack” treatment too. And for a game like Lair (dungeons, dragons, air-based war campaigns, and all) you should expect nothing less of a soundtrack that could compete with that of Peter Jackson‘s “Lord of the Rings” movie trilogy.

John Debney of “Sin City” and “The Passion of the Christ” fame had an interview with IGN of what it was like bagging the role of music composer for Factor 5‘s dragon flight title. After sitting down with the Sony creative team, he had this to say:

I was really struck by the idea that they had, which was to create music that was really very cinematic in approach… They were also interested in creating very specific themes for the different characters. So, in a way, it was very much like doing a film for me in that I created themes and then once those themes were approved sort of extrapolating from them and going from there.

To give you an idea of how massive and ambitious the project was, Debney notes that they had eight full CDs to work with. “We recorded for three days in London at Abbey Road Studios with a 90-piece orchestra,” he continues. The creators of Lair were trying to achieve something new in terms of integrating music into the game – an important aspect of which is getting themes to flow from one to the other as the game progresses. As certain moments in the game will suddenly shift, the music has to fit into that, sometimes requiring a 4-minute track to change in theme after only 2-minutes.

Apparently, dragons don’t just breather fire, they sing quite well too. Click the “Read” link below to check out the full interview with John Debney.