MUSIC+SOUND AWARDS 2023 WINNER SPOTLIGHT

BEST ORIGINAL COMPOSITION IN A VIDEO GAME (CINEMATICS / CUTSCENES)

God of War Ragnarök

Game Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment, California

Composer: Bear McCreary

Music Producers: Keith Leary + Peter Scaturro

Developer: Santa Monica Studio

Director: Eric Williams

Sony Interactive Entertainment outshone all the others in Best Composition in a Video Game (Cinematics / Cutscenes) this year with Bear McCreary’s incredible music on the epic God of War Ragnarök (that also won Best Sound Design in a Game).

Upon embarking on the project, McCreary acknowledged that he was “at the onset of a journey that would be among the most creatively challenging of my career.” He certainly rose to that challenge.

Insider music revelations from SIE…

“MUSIC EXPLORATION SYSTEM - God of War Ragnarök introduced many more open-world areas than its predecessor, which inspired our 4 tier exploration system: Exploration, Skirmish, Combat Low, and Combat High. This system was driven by our music intensity meter, which calculates the number and difficulty level of enemies. This number is then used to select music from a range of various intensities. Since all combat music is layered, we could randomize the music sections for each intensity and when the melodies would play. We also designed a “momentum meter” that calculates how well the player is doing during an encounter based on factors such as the number of landed attacks and damage received over a short period of time. This meter was used to add variation to when the melodic layer would play. All of these aspects worked together to create unique musical experiences for each player at any given time.

UNINTERRUPTED MELODIES - Ragnarök is a highly cinematic game that is equally rooted in combat. As such, we needed an adaptive music system that harmoniously scores both of these aspects. To create the illusion of linear scoring in an interactive game, we created a layer system that allowed us to prevent melody interruption, enabling us to end any underscore at natural musical breaks. All of the interactive music was split into layers, allowing us to control the melody independently from the rest of the music and have it enter and exit at the beginning and end of musical phrases. For encounters, the melody could play based on encounter difficulty or how well the player was performing during the encounter. For boss fights, the melody is able to exit naturally before the next cinematic transition by using the boss’ health to drive the melodic layer, which allows for a more musical handoff.”

Hear more from Bear McCreary about the project here - a wonderful, comprehensive BTS: https://bearmccreary.com/god-of-war-ragnarok/