Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Audio Design Interview

Made2Game had the opportunity to quiz Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning sound designer and composer Grant Kirkhope about the audio work he’s done on the game, his overall goals for the score, the importance of sound effects and music during cutscenes, and more. Here’s a little something on working with Rolston and how they went about making the tavern tunes:

Another reason why creating Amalur must be so much fun lies in working with its enthusiastic team, and the eccentric Ken Rolston in particular.

([Ken] is definitely a mad professor,” jokes Kirkhope, “there’s no doubt about that. I like to call him Lord Kenneth of Rolston. Ken’s one of those people that’s eternally high on life, he’s eternally full of beans so he’ll have all these weird and wacky ideas and we all have to go off and implement them. So yeah, he’s great!)

Elsewhere, partner in noise Mark Cromer, previously sound engineer at Civilization creators Firaxis, provides creative inspiration through his nimble guitar work:

([Mark Cromer] is a very brilliant, classically trained guitar player so he has played all these bizarre string instruments in all the taverns you go into. There are quite a few actually. I’m not sure how many [different songs] there are but Mark has played and composed all of those himself.

“There are things throughout the game called Lorestones, which kind of tell you a story, and that’s Mark playing again while somebody talks over the music. It’s part of a story that you can read so it kind of fills you in with the lore of the game.)