Interviews

February 13, 2008

Composer Richard Jacques on Conflict: Denied Ops, The Club, and Mass Effect Cinematics
By Louis Bedigian

“In Conflict a lot of the music is AI-driven, so we can change the intensity of the music in less than one second, perfectly seamless and in a musical way.”

Interactive music: is it good or bad for video games? Is it a true improvement over the last generation, or merely a matter of different sounds at different times? These are some of the things I wanted to address while interviewing Richard Jacques, composer of Conflict: Denied Ops and The Club.

“It can be more complex than that,” he said. “Especially when you are talking about choices you are looking mainly at RPGs. When I was working on [the cinematic music for] Mass Effect, for example, there were many sections with sometimes five choices, so each piece of music had to be scored for each choice, and had to work with the gameplay that takes place before and after this particular choice, which opens up a myriad of potential threads or branches that the music can take.

“The interactive music system in Conflict: Denied Ops is more based upon scoring many different pieces of music that can fit together, interlock, or sit on top of one another if you like, so we are able to switch between them seamlessly using the dynamic music system in the game.”

Consequently, he says, “it is quite time-consuming to create this type of content and is like a giant jigsaw puzzle, ensuring everything fits together perfectly.”


Conflict: Denied Ops

With so many shooters on the market and most having a war theme (or close to it), what are your first thoughts when being offered a game like Conflict: Denied Ops?

Richard Jacques: It is true that you have a lot of shooters out there, mainly because this is probably the most popular genre overall, and I believe there is always room for new titles within the genre. I was a genuine fan of the original Conflict series so it was a very simple decision for me to work on the project. Also, I have scored many action games and so I am experienced in working with these kinds of games. The game has some diverse environmental settings as well, which gave me great scope to include some world and ethnic instrumentation that one may not normally associate with a military shooter.

Which is more important: to have music that sounds traditional in regards to the war theme of the game (which gamers expect to hear), or having music that stands out from the crowd?

RJ: It's a mixture of the two plus many other factors. For example, gamers will expect to hear references to military style, and of course an action soundtrack is used to heighten moments of tension and action, but additionally to create space between frantic battles.

I also try to make my scores reflect the setting and locations of a game perhaps more than others. For example, in Conflict: Denied Ops, we have various regions throughout the world that are used as locations for the game, and I have taken different world and ethnic musical references (both in terms of instrumentation and style) and fused these influences with a modern day military action score.


The Club


The word "interactive" is thrown around a lot these days, but it doesn't usually mean anything. Explain how the Conflict music is interactive, and what this meant for you, the composer.

RJ: I have to disagree! Interactive music means that the music in the game reacts in some way to how the game state changes, or how the player actually plays the game. It's a pretty complex process and there is a lot of work that goes into it, so it DOES mean a great deal.

If a licensed music track, for example, is just played as a musical background for a section of gameplay, then that is a matter of just playing a linear piece of music. But many composers including myself take interactive music very seriously these days, as we are working in an interactive medium, and linear music (for the most part) simply doesn't do a good enough job anymore.

It's an interesting point though – many composers have been working hard at this issue for quite a few years now and as the quality is getting really, really high, maybe people don't notice it as much, and that is a good thing; it means we're doing our jobs well. You don't necessarily have to notice the music change underneath the game, but rest assured if you played the game twice, completely differently, the music would also play out a lot differently. And that is how it should be.

In Conflict a lot of the music is AI-driven, so we can change the intensity of the music in less than one second, perfectly seamless and in a musical way. You can really notice it in the game if you go from exploring an uninhabited building and then suddenly entering a room full of enemies. The music changes quickly, seamlessly, the intensity ramps up, and all in a very smooth musical way without simply changing from one piece of music to another. So it's more of a dynamic music system.


Most of Conflict’s screens involve an explosion or two, indicating the type of gameplay we can expect.

Aside from the interactive nature of the music, what are some of the things that you did to make players feel as though they are a part of the Conflict experience?

RJ: In Conflict: Denied Ops, it's all about the action. So we wanted to get the players' hearts racing in the right places, as well as build suspense in others, giving many emotional contrasts throughout the game. Also, referring back to the location-based music and elements used, the player will really get the flavor of that specific region around the world.

Another game you worked is The Club. Tell us about that.

RJ: The Club is an incredibly fast-paced action arcade shooter, created by Bizarre Creations and SEGA. In the music for the game, I really wanted to emphasize the feeling of speed and time pressure, in a similar way to a racing game.

The music in The Club is very fast-paced aggressive electronica / industrial, and we were very conscious from the outset that we wanted the music to become part of the gameplay, and so took a great deal of inspiration from the levels themselves, specifically the sound design elements. So I looked at a great deal of research material that the team had gathered, such as still photographs, video footage and raw location based audio files. This would play a big part in building the overall 'sound' of the music in The Club.

To give you an example, one of the levels is set in Venice. This was one of the first major tracks I composed, and in a way provided a blueprint for the rest of the soundtrack. We identified the key sounds that could potentially be included into the sound palette for the soundtrack, such as church bells, various wooden creaks and hits, water, basically anything you would expect to 'hear' in this particular real world location. These sounds were then extensively processed by myself and my assistant Marc, to give us a totally unique bed of sounds to work with. I then wrote the tracks with other more traditional electronic and industrial sounds.

Given that each character is being treated differently in The Club (each has a distinct style and background, etc.), did you write unique themes for each of them? Or were the developers looking for a different approach?

RJ: The music tracks in the single player campaign were more location-based as opposed to character- based; using sounds that you would hear in a particular location, which were then manipulated to create the musical sound palette.


The Club has some interesting camera angles to match its fast-paced gameplay and soundtrack.

How does the on-foot music differ from what you'll hear during a high-speed chase?

RJ: The game is ALL about high-speed on-foot chasing and shooting!!!

You did the cinematics music for Mass Effect. Is this the music that plays during the movie sequences within the game?

RJ: Yes, that's right. I scored about 25 minutes of music for the game, along with Jack Wall, Sam Hulick and David Kates. My contribution to Mass Effect was mostly cinematics, but some of the music cues have also been used during gameplay sections as well.

How did you become involved with Mass Effect, and is it weird working on only a portion of the music players will hear and not the entire score?

RJ: My good friend Jack Wall, who was the lead composer on Mass Effect, asked me to become involved to score a lot of the cinematics. He was familiar with my music (especially Headhunter and Starship Troopers) and knew that I would be the perfect fit for a lot of these scenes. I worked closely with the rest of the composing team and the talented folk at BioWare to ensure there was a smooth cohesion between all the music. Actually it was a wonderfully collaborative process, since all the composers were sharing ideas and critiquing each other's work, which raised the bar further.

For the SingStar series, you were hired as a song composition consultant. Talk about that.

RJ: My role on the SingStar franchise is largely as a technical consultant. For the first few SingStar titles I created the files that display the notes on screen and check the pitch of the singer against the pitch of the original vocal. Due to the success of the franchise there is now quite a large team of people doing this, and I act as a consultant to check quality and accuracy of the pitch tracking system. It's a fairly specialist role as you have to have not only a very good musical ear but also a lot of experience of working with sound drivers, sound subsystems and the hardware that is involved.

Anything else you'd like to share about Conflict: Denied Ops, The Club, or any other game you're working on?

RJ: Well it has certainly been a busy few months for me. I am just coming to the end of scoring a major AAA title for Eidos to be released this summer, and shortly I am due to perform my OutRun remixes at some upcoming Video Games Live concerts in the US and Canada. Later this year I will be hard at work on the upcoming PS3 action blockbuster from Sony, Eight Days.

Sounds cool. Thank you for your time, let’s talk again soon.

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For more info on the music of Richard Jacques, visit www.richardjacques.com