As the games industry develops and expands it’s horizons, there is a growing call for music that goes beyond being just “a detached backdrop to the action on screen”, and begins “adding emotional depth and soul to scenarios and [to] help maintain the suspension of disbelief that is so crucial for players.”1 In other words music that reacts directly to the player and therefore gives each player an individual experience.
There is however a slight contradiction in the two terms most commonly used to describe this style of music: ‘Adaptive’ and ‘Interactive’. By definition the two words do mean different things, the former suggesting music that changes without direct player command and the later suggesting music that directly, and with a players knowledge, responds to game input. So perhaps the term ‘interactive’ should be reserved for games where the user is knowingly engaging with the changes to the music. Guy Whitmore has noted that “‘Adaptive audio’ is a term used to describe audio and music that reacts appropriately to - and even anticipates - gameplay. The term ‘interactive audio’ is also used in this way, but it is used more broadly, and it has been misused and overused.”1 This perhaps suggests that the word ‘interactive’ should be used to refer to games like Guitar Hero, Singstar and Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of time , where the player controls the music with a direct and intended action. Hence for this discussion of game music, I will be using the term ‘adaptive’ and mean it to refer to music that is controlled by player and game actions, but not necessarily with the players conscious knowledge.
As outlined above, adaptive music involves a soundtrack that is able to be varied in time with how action unfolds on screen. However this also means having a large amount of available audio, that can be called up at the appropriate time; and with modern gamers expectations of music being more in line the latest blockbuster than the blip-blop of the traditional arcade, this can be very memory intensive. This of course then brings up the argument of quality vs. quantity, which in this case comes down to pre-mixed samples vs. in game rendering.
Of all the various techniques used to implement adaptive music, the most common method is by having music that is split into individual segments and triggered in ‘states’ or ‘modules’. This can work both horizontally and vertically. Horizontally being changes in structure: Intro, looping section, possible second looping section, outro. Vertically being changes to texture: different layers that make up the music as a whole, are combined in different ways to vary timbre. Audio software such as Fmod and Wwise make it easy to set up music to operate in this way, as can be seen in this example, and it is also just as simple to set up basic systems for doing this in game editors such as UDK “which can be effective but are also time consuming to implement one by one.”2
Due to the fact that it is time consuming to set up the trigger systems in game editors, by which adaptive music can be implemented, it is becoming more common for the change in music to respond to game stats. The added advantage of this is that it uses a system that is more global and able to react to a player anywhere in the game level, whereas a trigger method would be more location specific. A good example of where a system like this is used is Hellgate: London.3 The music system within that game reacts based on variables such as player health, number of nearby enemies, total remaining enemies and the distance the player has travelled within a set time. This results in music variance that reflects individual playing styles of the end users.
This brings me on to the example that I wish to discuss in this post: No One Lives Forever 2. For which the score was composed by Guy Whitmore, whom I mentioned earlier.
The game was released in 2002 by Monolith Productions and Sierra Entertainment, and highlights approaches and techniques that are still relevant and used today.
As the cinematic ends, the music continues to seamlessly move the user into live gameplay. You can hear that different layers from the musical cue of the cinematic are looped, fading in and out whilst the player explores the items in their inventory. Once the player moves under the wooden structure, the ‘end’ sequence of this section begins: an orchestral swell that moves into the next musical looping section when the player finds the first letter. The tension then increases with the addition of drums to the texture; over the top of which musical snippets that were present in the cinematic, continue to decorate. As the player continues up the path, finding further letters, you can hear that each time one is found another layer is added or removed.
As the player nears the village and the robotic bird says “Be Careful” and starts talking about stealth, the music again changes. The drums leave the texture, along with other layers, and the ones which remain melodically switch to softer staccato and pizzicato notes. There is again an orchestral swell as the player reaches the transition into another area of the level, and another musical section.
An electric bass is added to the texture once the player is inside the town, which will later to be seen as a characteristic of this location. However as the player is still ‘undetected’, the main theme of the music remains in the ‘stealth’ cue. As the player progresses through the village the musical layers continue to fade in and out, and we see the use of several micky mouseing swells that coincide with the moving of a body and when the player is approaching corners. Then an onscreen message displays “An Alarm has been sounded” and as the player emerges out into the open, the music changes. The bassline becomes more prominent, the tempo increases and the music overall becomes more funky; after a few bars we also hear the addition of a brass section. This can be said to be either a “Fight” or “Discovered” cue, but overall signifies a heightened danger. The funky music continues until the last visible NPC character is killed; which is also marked with a brass stab. We then return to the ‘stealth’ cue.
Conclusions -
References
1 - Guy Whitmore, Gamasutra, <http://www.gamasutra.com/resource_guide/20030528/whitmore_01.shtml>
2 - Alexander Brandon, IASIG Publications <http://www.iasig.org/pubs/interviews/guy_whitmore.shtml>
3 - David Steinwedel, Sound Design for Games, Films, TV & Media, The Music System for Hellgate:London <http://www.dsteinwedel.com/Articles/Articles.html>
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