COMPOSER JESPER KYD talks with Richard Buxton about taking the musical reigns for the Darksiders franchise with his score for DARKSIDERS II, its unique challenges, and finding inspiration for scoring death, hell, and heaven.
TS - From the oppression of FREEDOM FIGHTERS, to the exoticism of the ASSASSIN’S CREED series, you have been continually lauded for your ability to lend a game’s universe a sense of authenticity while simultaneously maintaining your own distinctive voice. How significant is the world and back-story of a video game when deciding to take on new projects such as DARKSIDERS II?
JESPER KYD - It’s really important. Whether it is a modern urban environment or a specific historical time period – I really dive into the world and work on finding interesting ways to express these types of different worlds. It’s not just about the story when scoring a game – it’s also about taking what’s there in the game world and bringing it out to the surface. I really love digging deep and sometimes I bring things out with music that do not really fit at first glance, but from a gamer’s perspective it makes complete sense. For example, “Flight over Venice” or “Venice Rooftops” from Assassin’s Creed II might not be the music you would expect to play during flight or running scenes – but this music is intertwined with Ezio’s Theme (“Ezio’s Family”) and gives a sense of vulnerability and realism instead of making everything epic-sounding. I never looked at Ezio as an epic character, more of a man who has endured a profound loss which gives birth to a deeply rooted quest to destroy the Templars. Throughout the 3 Ezio Assassin’s Creed games, I worked on reminding the player about his troubled past; the emotion or sadness that the music touches on reminds the player of what happened to him and why Ezio does what he does. This is a film scoring technique which I have been employing in many of my scores.
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