Musical Introduction

Compulsion did a huge amount of research in the early parts of production, with Creative Director David Sears and his team undertaking multiple trips to the American South in order to properly capture the look, feel, and stories of the region they aimed to depict. And it was at the end of one of these trips that Sears returned with an idea.

Audio Director Chris Fox tells the story that started it all: “David came back from one of his trips to the South and said, ‘I really feel like I’ve had this epiphany – players’ actions should equal musicality.’ So that was kind of the first big challenge, and then I had to go away and kind of think about what that meant.”

Music is a huge part of the identity of the South – blues, country, jazz and more can all trace their roots to the region – and that was always going to be represented. But the gauntlet thrown down to Fox and Deriviere was to create a game in which that music needed to feel tied to what the player was doing, where they were, and what story they were unravelling.

“So I was like, ‘OK, how can someone make music while they play, but not [just make] a music game?’” explains Fox. “That was how it started, and then we just went into lots of brainstorms.”

The Art of Science

From here, the team worked together to create the full suite of songs you’ll hear in the final game. And unexpectedly, at least for Deriviere, the practical element of getting the game to adjust its music to how you’re playing was actually one of the easier parts of the process.

“Technology in video games has immensely improved over the time, and we are now able to very much tailor – throughout any situation in a game – [how the music reacts to] whatever we want. The difficulty is that you have the technology, but you still have to have the creativity and the coherency of using the technology in the right way. For instance, for music, you don’t want the system to be complex [to the point where it] doesn’t make musical sense. It’s just years and years of practicing and experimenting. And we did experiment – it’s fail-and-retry, basically.”

The systems Fox and his team created mean that the soundtrack will ‘know’ if you’re stopping to explore, or charging headlong into a combat section, adjusting the track around that to feel right, while still carrying the core themes.

“We had to deconstruct each song to make it work within the levels,” Deriviere continues. “At the end of the level, you visit the creature and you have this song at its peak – but previously [in the level], you have sections that are building up, and it’s not in the same form as the final song. It’s a completely different form, with different harmonies, different melodies. Sometimes there’s even a corrupted aspect to the melody, because the world is corrupted, and we wanted people to feel this way.”

In effect, it’s turning music into a part of the wider soundscape – the same way a game will have different sound effects for walking through water as opposed to mud. “I think that’s why I wanted to work with Olivier,” enthuses Fox. “He sees the audio and not just music. It’s music woven into sound effects, sound effects woven into music. It’s the audio experience for the player, and they’re not separated necessarily.”

Pushing that idea even further, in South of Midnight, music is quite literally a character: “At the end of the level, the song is always performed by a top-talent singer, but within the levels it’s by a kids’ choir,” explains Deriviere. “The kids are basically the star of the show – they’re all over the place, and they mean so much to the game. These are the Strands, the entities, whatever magic you want to call them, that are helping [lead character] Hazel find her way through this magical world.”

Southern Charm

And to add to the complexity of all this, there was a final piece of the puzzle for Fox and Deriviere – going all the way back to those original research trips, the music needed to feel as if it belonged in the South, across multiple regions, while still offering up a single, coherent soundtrack.

“At the beginning, you know, talking with Chris and David, it was more about trying to find something that would be interesting, get something inspired by the Deep South, but create something that was unique for the game,” explains Deriviere.

He realized that, in order to do that, he needed to look outwards, not inwards: “Oh, we may need to hire some talents to record live music. But [then it became] multiple talents, on a scale that I’ve never done. [We had] more than 50 people involved, not even including the orchestra.”

This was a much bigger task than the team had gone in expecting. ““It was something that evolved over time,” says Fox. “We started with like an hour of music, or something ridiculous like that, which was obviously way too little. But at the beginning of a project, you just don’t know what the needs are.

“I appreciate the belief in us that when I said, ‘We’ve got this really cool idea, we need to we need to go with live performers.’ And then later on, ‘Oh, actually, I know I said we weren’t going to use an orchestra, but we actually need to go and record an orchestra now.’

“For the higher-ups here at Compulsion to say, ‘This wasn’t necessarily budgeted, but we think you’ve got a strong vision, and what you’re doing with Olivier seems really good, so here we go’ – that was something I really appreciated from Compulsion and Xbox, to roll with us on that.”