The Music of Splintercell: Double Agent and an Interview with Romain His

It seems like Splinter Cell: Double Agent has one tactic that we all wish would fail anytime soon – delaying tactics. Recently, it has been reported that the September release has now been moved to October. But we all have to keep our guards up. You never know when Sam Fisher might walk in on you.

But here’s one thing that you shouldn’t delay – listening to how Splinter Cell: Double Agent will sound like. Not to spoil your fun or anything, but the whole QJ crew is behind me when I say that the guitars on the Jail theme is just wicked fresh. The synthesizers on the Menu theme was solid and controlled. Kudos to Romain His. If you want to know more about the story behind the music, download the audio file of Senior Coordinator Derek Chan‘s in-depth interview with His. Here’s a transcript of the interview to make sure you don’t miss a beat.

Download: [Interview with Romain His]
                  [Jail Theme]
                  [Menu Theme]

It seems like Splinter Cell: Double Agent has one tactic that we all wish would fail sometime soon – delay tactics. Recently, it has been reported that the September release has now been moved to October. We all have to keep our guard up though, you never know when Sam Fisher might sneak up on you.

Here’s one thing that you shouldn’t delay – listening to what Splinter Cell: Double Agent will sound like. Not to spoil your fun or anything, but the whole QJ crew is behind me when I say that the guitars on the Jail theme are just wicked fresh. The synthesizers on the Menu theme are solid and controlled, kudos to Romain His. If you want to know more about the story behind the music, download the audio file of Senior Coordinator Derek Chan‘s in-depth interview with His. Here’s a transcript of the interview to make sure you don’t miss a beat.

Derek Chan: Hi, IÂ’m Derek Chan, Senior Coordinator on Tom ClancyÂ’s Splinter Cell Double Agent. IÂ’m here today with Romain His, the Lead Sound Designer for the project, and weÂ’re here to talk about the music. Hi Romain.

Romain His: Hey.

DC: Hey, how you doing?

Romain His: Fine.

DC: So letÂ’s just get into it! Splinter Cell has always had great, distinctive music.  Lalo Schifrin’s epic score for Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow, Amon Tobin’s electronica for Chaos Theory – so, let me ask you who is composing the music for SCDA, and what is the aim?  

RH: So this time, the music has been composed by a group of people, instead of a single composer. This group of people is called Behavior Music. Michael McCann is the main composer and he’s working with soloists – guitar, drums, vocal, violins – so in fact it’s a bunch of people that’s doing the music.

About the aim, in fact, since the beginning of the project, we wanted to move the musical direction Splinter Cell into something more cinematic, more organic, and more emotionally driven, dramatic.

DC: OK, so what youÂ’re saying is the use of real instruments important to the feel and the tension in the game?

RH: Yeah, the use of real instruments was really something that we wanted to be in the forefront of the soundtrack. Because of the story, because of the new structure of the game, because also of the focus on Sam’s character, we wanted to have strong lead instruments to follow Sam’s personal adventure. We wanted to have a true dirtiness in the sound, meaning that we wanted to hear the finger on the guitar string – we wanted to avoid the clean digital sound that you hear too much maybe in video games. We wanted to have a lot of different layers of instruments that come and go in the mix depending to situations, to Sam’s moves. And se wanted to have a very organic background, very troubled, very heavy.

DC: So SCDA takes Sam Fisher around the world – from Africa to the Arctic, Shanghai to New York – how does the music capture the feel of each location?

RH: We did ask the soloists to work on local color for each of the maps. In fact, you can hear bluesy voices in Jail, you can hear kalimba in Kinshasa, you can hear Chinese voices in Shanghai. But even if we did so, we wanted to avoid the tourist cliché, the James Bond syndrome. WE wanted to have a global tone for all of the game, and then we wanted the local color to get consistent with this global tone and then reach it, and absolutely not disturb it.

DC: So, whatÂ’s the process exactly for composing a theme? LetÂ’s take the Kinshasa level for example.

RH: The first part of the job is to define a style – a global style for the level with the composer. Working with him with examples, mainly coming from movies, for instance. Once we have a direction, the main body of work is really to do in-game tests, with the gameplay. So it’s really a pragmatic and an experimental process where we send instruments one by one, and we test them with Sam in situations – then it works or it does not work. Then there’s a lot of feedback, modification, feedback, modification, until we reach the moment where it’s ok, it works.

But the result isn’t that it’s beautiful – of course it’s beautiful – but that it works with the moves in the game, with the enemies getting closer, with Sam aiming, with Sam doing this and that. And with every little location in the level. So it’s quite a complex and long process until we reach final validation for this.

DC: So letÂ’s come back to a point you made earlier about the soundtrack having many layers. The layers are tied to interactivity. Does making the music interactive involve a lot of extra work, beyond a normal soundtrack?

RH: Obviously. ItÂ’s something that is completely specific to video game music production. And I suppose all my colleagues in other companies, itÂ’s the same for them. ItÂ’s really that you have to test it in situations with the gamepad in hand. ItÂ’s a feel. ItÂ’s a sensation. ItÂ’s not only an aesthetic. ItÂ’s not only a support for a story for instance. It is, but itÂ’s not only this. The main point is the game sensation, and the fact that the music has to go with it, to make one body with it.

So in game tests, in interactive tests, itÂ’s a huge part of the work with the composer. And itÂ’s something for composers that is very different from movie production for instance.

The first thing we do is that we make a prototype of the interactive behaviour of the music, not with final music, but with just placeholder. Once we have this prototype, then we can experiment with the files that the composer sends us. And itÂ’s a very quick result. Then we can go for feedback/modification.

DC: OK cool. So last question. WhatÂ’s your favorite part of the soundtrack, personally, and what do you want the fans to hear?

RH: I do especially like the Jail music, and the New York music. The final New York music I think is a beautiful track.

DC: Ok. Thanks very much for your time. ThatÂ’s it for now!

RH: Ok! Bye bye!

DC: Bye bye!

Download: [Interview with Romain His]
                  [Jail Theme]
                  [Menu Theme]

Via splintercell