Dragon Age: Origins Music Interview

Play Magazine has conjured up a two-page interview they recently conducted with video game composer Inon Zur about the score he created for BioWare’s Dragon age: Origins.

Dragon Age: Origins is considered (dark fantasy) because of its depiction of violence, sex, and moral ambiguities rather than the clearly defined good versus evil of (high fantasy). Do you feel the process for creating a dark fantasy soundtrack greatly differs from a high fantasy soundtrack? With dark fantasy, do you feel you have greater freedom during the creation process, just as the script writers have greater freedom in the stories they tell?

I would explain it by saying that this is more of a true human story than a fairy tale. Human history has showed us the injustice, complexities and brutalities in what we call human characteristics and behavior. These aspects are usually eliminated from a high fantasy story. There is a real effort in Dragon Age: Origins to tell the story without covering up or making things look perfect; it’s much more comparable to real life. And here comes the real challenge of the score to be able to represent this multilayered reality and to mirror it all; to be able to tell the story and to describe the brutality while admiring the beauty; to depict the cruelty but also highlight the love, affection and bravery. This was a real challenge.

Fallout 3 even gets thrown into the mix:

I have to ask about the (Butcher Pete) song in Fallout 3. Steeped in controversy, this old-timey song by blues musician Roy Brown was included among the (period pieces) of the Fallout 3 soundtrack and helps to further steep the wasteland in retro American lore. There is some debate about whether the song is about a guy who likes to have sex with a lot of women, or sex with anything, or if he is a serial killer who preys on women, or all of the above. But this makes me think of (period piece) songs that fit the game’s era and which are played by NPCs who live within the gameworld, as opposed to atmospheric songs which only outsider viewers can hear. Did you include any such (period) songs in Dragon Age: Origins? What do you think of the dynamic between period songs versus atmospheric songs for the audience?

Like in any project, decisions about songs versus score have to do with the nature of the projects and the artistic needs and choices. Era songs are VERY powerful when it comes to games that tend to happen in a specific known time, place and era where you can state the exact date and where you are in that realm. They tend to evoke the feeling of (reality) which enhances the (realism) in the game. Fallout 3 is definitely this kind of project, but Dragon Age is not. Dragon Age happens in an indefinite time somewhere in the far past, but we don’t even get a specific time or place. In this case we actually want to further enhance the undefined time/place feel, so we will rely more on score and less on songs, and if we do incorporate songs they will feel like part of this (dark fantasy) environment.