Heroes of Might and Magic V Q&A

Ubisoft’s official Might and Magic website has been updated with a new Q&A that discusses the music elements of Heroes of Might and Magic V with composer Rob King. A snippet, as usual:

Q: Why were you contacted to work on the first HOMM? What attracted you to the project? Were you familiar with the heroic-fantasy universe?

A: Heroes of Might and Magic was the first score Paul Romero and I worked on together. When Jon Van Canegham and Mark Caldwell (from New World Computing) gave me the green light and creative control on the music production, I knew I wanted to take a very classical approach to it. On HOMM I the graphics encouraged me to do a very baroque score. I really wanted it to be like a classical soundtrack in a sense.

A friend introduced me to Paul back in 1992 at one of his infamous parties where he gets friends together to play music at his house. I remember seeing him play piano and was extremely impressed not only with his abilities but also with how genuine of a person he was. We immediately hit it off and remained the best of friends ever since. When it was time to get into the score I gave him a call and he came over to my apartment at the time for a meeting. Back then I had a roommate and my (studio) was basically my bedroom with tons of gear and a small futon in the corner. We started bouncing ideas back and forth and came up with a couple of pieces. I knew that we were going to make something special with that game. Between his Classical background and my pop music background our collaboration was not only melodic but very catchy and had all the elements of good classical arrangements. We did that whole score in the bedroom of my apartment in South Pasadena, CA at the time.

HOMM was the 4th project I worked on and I was very new to the whole game design thing and my vision of audio was purely based on the films I saw from the past. So my interpretations of a heroic-fantasy universe were images of King Arthur, Excalibur and all those cool historical documentaries from the 80’s. Jon’s vision is what attracted me to the game and Jon & Mark are two of the most genuine, cool and generous people I know. I will continue to remain great friends with them.