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High scores

Interviews with the people behind the best video game soundtracks

12 July 2024

  • Gustavo Santaolalla.

    The Last of Us has three main characters: Ellie, Joel and Gustavo Santaolalla’s music

    The haunting songs of the video game and TV series get to the heart of Joel and Ellie’s story. The man behind them talks about the ‘magical’ process of composing

24 May 2024

  • Borislav Slavov, immortalised in Baldur’s Gate 3 as Milil, a ‘deity of song’.

    From IT worker to god of music: the unlikely story of Baldur’s Gate 3 composer Borislav Slavov

    If you hear the words ‘down by the river’ and immediately start humming one of modern gaming’s most gorgeous earworms, you have the Bafta-winning Borislav Slavov to thank

19 April 2024

  • Monument Valley 2.

    ‘I was trying to create the sound of a really warm hug’: the poignant story behind Monument Valley 2’s music

    Todd Baker composed the soundtrack for the indie puzzler as he was living through the loss of his mother. On the series’ 10th anniversary, he reflects on the experience

8 March 2024

  • Petri Alanko.

    ‘It seems it has its own mind’: the bizarre and terrifying instrument behind Alan Wake 2’s soundtrack

    Following the game’s hero into hellish madness, Petri Alanko required an especially unsettling score. Enter a noise machine that disturbed even Stephen King

12 January 2024

  • Crash Bandicoot

    ‘People laughed at it’: the unlikely story behind the music of Crash Bandicoot

    For many, the game became the sound of the 90s – but Josh Mancell tells us how the music for PlayStation’s first mascot game originated in Kraft cheese and Kraftwerk

21 November 2023

  • Composer Yuzo Koshiro in 2023

    Meet Yuzo Koshiro: your favourite game’s soundtrack wouldn’t exist without him

    How the Streets of Rage and Etrian Odyssey composer was inspired by disco, city pop, and slyly recording music from arcade cabinets

15 September 2023

  • ‘Adventure, exploration, mystery and vastness of space’ … central themes in Bethesda’s game Starfield.

    ‘The music conjures emotions to reflect the mystery of outer space’: Inon Zur on the musical universe of Starfield

    The composer was involved at the earliest stages of development of the space-exploration game, providing concept music that inspired its themes. It’s no wonder his soundtrack evokes its very essence

18 August 2023

  • Crystal clear … a screenshot from Final Fantasy XVI.

    A break from the past: Final Fantasy XVI’s composer on ushering in a new era

    Masayoshi Soken has quietly ripped up the rulebook for the latest edition of Square Enix’s epic series

22 May 2023

  • Assassin’s Creed Mirage takes place in 9th-century Baghdad.

    How Assassin’s Creed Mirage captured the Islamic golden age – in a disused New York power station

    Composer Brendan Angelides was cautious about agreeing to write the soundtrack for the latest edition of Ubisoft’s blockbuster. But working Palestinian composer and orchestrator Akram Haddad helped

21 April 2023

  • All about empathy … The Last Guardian.

    ‘Muted, soft, like watercolours’: The Last Guardian’s soundtrack was an appeal to the heart

    Composer Takeshi Furukawa talks about creating the soundtrack for Fumito Ueda’s touching tale about the relationship between human and beast

10 March 2023

  • HiFi Rush video game screenshot

    ‘The player drives the music’: how Hi-Fi Rush reinvented the rockstar game

    A dizzying new game lets players live out their alt-rock dreams. Its creators explain how its pioneering design had to be note-perfect

20 January 2023

  • Isolation, carnage, brutality … the marketing art for Dead Space.

    ‘Pure terror in musical form’: Dead Space’s composer shares its unsettling secret

    Jason Graves explains how the cult horror game’s score began as a modern, Hollywood soundtrack, but ended up drawing on a 20th-century orchestral technique to create something much scarier

16 December 2022

  • A moment of serenity … Stardew Valley’s Dance of the Moonlight Jellies scene.

    Music to harvest and relax to: how the Stardew Valley soundtrack caught the rhythms of the seasons

    Like everything else about the hit indie farming game, Stardew Valley’s soundtrack is an extension of its creator, Eric Barone. He reveals how he composed it by listening to the weather

18 November 2022

  • Altair final. You wouldn’t expect such a cocktail of history and sci-fi from the original key art. Credit: Ubisoft Assassin's Creed 15th anniversary, for High Scores

    Scholars, symphonies and rave music: making the Assassin’s Creed soundtrack

    How do you create the audio DNA of a new game series? How do you make time travel sound like time travel? And how does electronic music match with a medieval adventure? Composer Jesper Kyd reveals all

21 October 2022

  • Deathloop

    Psychedelics, spies and Swedish jazz: how Deathloop made video games sound cool

    The composer and audio director explain how they nailed the soundtrack for Arkane’s alternate-history 1960s assassination game – with the help of Yes, Tonbruket and a clavinet
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