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As the title says, the Threat Engage sound need to be seperated from the music in the audio settings. I like to mute the music when playing and really listen to the sounds of the game. However, if I do this, I will not be alerted of an imminent threat. I would like to suggest two seperate sliders in the audio-settings. One for music and one for alerts.

This combat OST can be played during any fight but it most notably plays during the Finale of the game on Tartarus, this was an excellent soundtrack during the battle against the Board. I should mention that I'm looking for a name if that's possible, I can't find any resemblance for it on the playstore

Can someone indicate where I can purchase the opening and closing themes from the game soundtrack? I loved it !

While the music is very well done, I'd prefer it if the music while wondering around was less.. "Cello D Minor" And more energetic and peppy like the trailer. To me, there is this under current of just having a good time while the government is transition. I guess I want to hear more fiddle as Rome burns.

I'm a big fan of a good game score, and I really like to get a feel for a game ahead of time with the music. Obviously I can't do that since as far as I can tell there isn't an OST released yet, but I really hope we get one soon.

Hi all. When I backed the game on Fig during crowdfunding campaign, there was a possibility to add Audio CD physical soundtrack of the game as an add-on reward (not part of any tier, but added physical item, like those tin figurines of Aloth, Edér and Pallegina were). However, the reward was not delivered with the rest and I didn´t find any info about it anywhere. I contacted the support about this and got no answer at all. This add-on cost 20 USD. Any info about this? Thanks for help

Lately I have been spending much of my free time playing around with character builds in Pillars of Eternity 2 and reading these forums. In addition to being a huge fan of Obsidian games, CRPGs, and fantasy genres in general, I also love to write fantasy themed music. (Actually Obsidian games have been stealing a lot of my time which I would normally spend writing new music lol.) I wanted to share with everyone (and shamelessly self promote) some of my work. You can listen to my music (for free) in my musician profile at Reverb Nation: https://www.reverbnation.com/danielgarzone

I can not initiate ship combat anymore. I sail up to a merchant ship, click attack, hear the battle music, and no combat happens. I keep sailing and hear the battle music. I have tried to attack multiple different ships with the same results. Seems unaffiliated ships are the main issue. I can double click on ships that are not unaffiliated and initiate attack.

The most important part of POE II for me is the music, and since the audio stretch goal was met last February 2017, i.e. a year ago, it seems fitting we should hear some new music this month! What do you guys think? So, if you see this, Justin Bell, when can I hear some new tunes? Please and thanks!

Some of you maybe didn't saw this, I personaly just found out about this video a few days ago. It's a great, almost 2hrs video, of Justin touching on his approach on Music & Sound Design. There are quite a lot of informations regarding his work for Pillars Of Eternity II : Deadfire. In case you're a Music Lover, in general & loved the Music from the 1st Game, this is for you. Hope you enjoy :

I was reading JFSOCC's post about why he/she (sorry don't know you gender ) didn't finish the game (here's the link: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/92127-i-never-finished-pillars-of-eternity/) and at some point he/she complains about hating combat because of its score. Although I liked combat music and didn't got bored of it, I understand why it can become annoying being 3-4 tracks and combat encounters being all over the place. So, wouldn't it be agreat thing if the sequel has unique music tracks for specific encounters and even places? Like if Cancelhaut had his own music only during wis combat encounter or if Raedric's Hold had its own score as an entire area? I believe this is going to make parts of the game more memorable.

Removed, thanks!

Having recently purchased Pillars of Eternity and both expansions through GOG.com... I was playing the audio files of the soundtrack today - what fantastic job by Justin Bell! I am truly amazed by the music, it has been a perfect complement/enhancement to the whole Pillars of Eternity experience. Loving it! I see that the files that I downloaded are named as such (MP3 & FLAC): pe-combat-a pe-combat-b pe-combat-c pe-combat-d pe-combat-e poe_dungeon_engwithan_ruins ... I see in a old post: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/71806-tags-for-digital-soundtrack/ that it looks like Justin provided files with tags, etc. - but it looks like this was maybe only available for 'Kickstarters'? Just wondering if the OST from GOG.com should have been updated, or is this not available for people just buying the game now? Thanks for any help

Hey people, I'm hoping to use the vast experience of people here to ask for some help to find some music specifically for a DnD game I'm running, but also hoping to help people in general find some nice background music for their own games. At the moment, I'm sending my players to the Abyss, and I was hoping for people here having knowledge of any fitting soundtracks for that. I don't watch a whole lot of movies or tv shows, so I have'nt stumbled across anything that might fit this. But earlier in my campaign the players ended up in desert landscapes, and I used this as background music wich worked awesome for the feel of that part. Music more fitting to the Abyss though has been harder for me, anyone that's got any ideas for me? Edit; Fixed the broken link for example music.

Hello. I am doing a series of streams / let's plays and upload it to YouTube. Recently one my video was flagged as containing copyrighted music. YouTube claims that combat music from Pillars of Eternity is copyrighted by some CD Baby company. Particularly it is composition "Come Soft Winds of Death". It seems that CD Baby really have some rights on the soundtrack: https://www.cdbaby.com/cd/obsidianentertainment I tried to dispute the claim, but was rejected. Is it possible to do something about this situation or ingame ost will be copyrighted? You can find mentioned video and music here: https://youtu.be/Bax2MQKbTNs?t=28m2s

Hello, I keep searching and searching, but I can't find this question previously asked anywhere, so I'll do it for the benefit of mankind or something: Is there any hope of Pillars of Eternity soundtrack appearing on Spotify? I love it and I'd really enjoy listening to it shuffled into my other music while at work, but I'm not a big fan of downloading personal files like mp3/flac files on my work harddrive. There's already a bunch of indie and AAA games featuring their soundtracks on Spotify, and I would personally really appreciate if PoE soundtrack could join these.

So I went through all the files in the game last night trying to locate the ambient sound files. I have the soundtrack and love it dearly. But what I really want is to be able to extract all the ambient sounds (rain/thunder, tavern talk, etc) and put them on a disk or cell phone. I simply love that stuff. Does anyone know how this can be accomplished? I don't believe they were in WAV format? Would they have to be converted somehow? Thanks in advance!

I have finally sat down, having had some time with PoE and can say without a doubt this is one of the finest rpg's I have ever played. Immediately you start the game you know Pillars is going to be something special when you hear that incredible music, and oh what music it is! At once, chilling, yet eliciting wonder and mythology reflective of all the great English, Saxon and Scandanavian tomes such as Beowulf; story, characterisation, combat, PoE has it all. Thank you so much Obsidian, you have given hope to an old-school gamer who had thought that the suits at EA and Ubisoft ruled unchallenged. Thank the Gods for you, Kickstarter, Bards Tale and Inxile, my gaming time looks ready to be full with the likes of PoE, Torment 2, Bards tale and Wasteland 2. If there is a god he is smiling down on Irvine, ca.

Public Service Announcement by Darren Monahan, web guy Before we get started on this week’s update, we wanted to make all of you aware of a very serious website vulnerability called “Heartbleed” that was discovered since our last update. This bug affected a huge number of sites and services across the internet, potentially exposing passwords and other sensitive information to hackers that understood how to exploit it. Unfortunately, the Eternity website was running an affected version of this software, and as soon as we became aware of it, we took the appropriate steps to close the vulnerability. While we have no evidence or other reasons to believe any passwords or personal information was stolen, we do recommend you change your password if you have an account, especially if you reuse this same password on other sites. To change your password, visit your Account Profile, click on the E-mail & Password tab, enter your current password, and your new password twice and click Save Changes. Please leave the e-mail address boxes empty. Learn more about Heartbleed. xkcd comic: How the Heartbleed bug works. Update by Justin Bell, Audio Director Hello awesome backers. My name is Justin Bell and I’m the Audio Director at Obsidian, and the Audio Lead/Composer for Pillars of Eternity. I know a lot of you have been waiting patiently to hear some news about the game’s music. Thanks for waiting, I’m happy to say this update will focus entirely on music! In it we’ll cover the high level creative guidelines we’re using to write the score. I’ll also provide you with an in depth look into my music writing process. For those of you who are chomping at the bit for more info about the sound design for PoE, don’t worry... We’re going to do another update in the future that focuses on that as well. But for now, let’s talk about music! Our next update will be a look at the most recent art our talented team has put together for the game. Justin's every day workspace. Style Making Pillars of Eternity feel like a modern day Infinity Engine game is important to us, and music plays a big role in achieving that goal. But what does that actually mean in practice? Well if you were to loosely analyze the music from Baldur’s Gate 1 & 2 and Icewind Dale 1 & 2 for example, you would find a number of stylistic similarities between them. Without getting too technical, their music combines tropes found in European folk and pre-Renaissance modal music, and mashes that together with modern day orchestration techniques and film music aesthetics. You’re probably thinking... “Where’s the human side of all this? Where’s the emotion? The music for the IE games is so much more than simply a mash-up of musical elements!” Putting it in such cold and analytical terms doesn’t really give those soundtracks the justice they deserve, does it? Still it’s important for me as the composer to understand things in that way, and here’s why. An incredible teacher of mine used to say, “When in doubt, use a model”. Another incredible teacher would likewise say, “Never proceed without a plan”. What they were both saying is that if you’re going to take a journey, you need to understand the path and know your destination to the best of your ability. Even if the plan needs to change at some point down the path, always think it through first. Luckily for me both are pretty clear. In that sense the soundtracks for the IE games are both my model and my plan, at least to a point. I’ve made a couple minor structural modifications to the formula, which I’ll describe in greater depth further on. But first I’d like to give you an inside peek into the creative process I use to write music. The Commute Here’s some news that’ll undoubtedly shock each and every one of you... I commute to work. Every. Day. Exciting right?! Right... Don’t let the mundaneness of that description fool you, as this is actually one of the most important parts of my day. It’s one of the few times that I get to listen to music without interruption, and I use this time to get inspired to write. Things I’ve been putting on lately are the soundtracks for The Elder Scrolls (III, IV, and V), The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, anything by Basil Poledouris, and of course the IE soundtracks, just to name a few. As I’m driving and listening I stay on the lookout for small moments that inspire me in some way. When I come across something that attracts my attention, like an interesting harmony or nice orchestral combination, I document the track number, time range, and any observations I have using a little handheld recorder. By the time I get to work I usually have roughly 10 small voice memos recorded for myself. When I get in front of my computer at work I pull the tracks I noticed into my audio program, edit out the sections in question, and categorize them with my notes for future use. It’s a way of systematizing inspiration, which I’ll admit may sound counter intuitive to some. When working on a project with deadlines while simultaneously trying to keep things the creative juices flowing, being organized is critical to successfully balancing those two often competing requirements. The audio booth with noise making props. Daily Bach After I’m through categorizing the nuggets of inspiration, I sit in front of my keyboard and sight read a single chorale from J.S. Bach’s beautiful collection of 371 four part chorales. Each day I read a new one in sequence, and I do this for a couple reasons. I’m a musician, sight reading is fun, and this is an excuse to keep my chops up. But more importantly, I do it to get motivated by the master of modern tonal harmony himself. When I’m actually writing music and get stuck at a tricky voice leading spot, the fact that I have Bach in my ear and at my fingertips is often a lifesaver. Sketches I like to keep the actual writing process as simple as possible. To do that, I open up my writing program (Nuendo 6 + NEK for those who are interested) and compose with one piano patch and one full string patch only. This is pretty standard practice for some, and I do it too. It allows me to focus on just the melody, rhythm, and harmony alone (i.e. the Music, with a capital “M”) without concerning myself too much with instrumentation or the mix. Both of those things aren’t important now and I know I’ll get to them later. For now it’s all about the music. By keeping the writing process simple, I free up my ability to stay creative. Here I’ll write whatever comes to mind. Sometimes it’s entire pieces of music, other times it’s a small fragment. I don’t really try to do anything specific or limit myself in any way; I just let the ideas flow as freely as possible. The idea here is to write as much music as possible without concern for the end result. Again, it’s important to keep things loose. At the end of each day I may write up to an hour of sketches, about 90% of which will never see the light of day. It’s the remaining 10% that I’m really after. I liken this process to panning for gold. The way I look at it is that in order to succeed, you need to know how to fail. It doesn’t matter to me if I’ve deliberately crafted a piece of music through the sheer force of my will and divine creativity or whatever. Happy accidents can and do often yield the best creative results, and allowing them to happen is essential to remaining creative while working under tight deadlines. Now you may be wondering, “Where’s the artistry in that?!? Anyone can do that!” The artistry lies in the ability to recognize a great idea when it comes to you, regardless of where it comes from or how deliberate the process to create it was. Simple as that! Process of Elimination and Categorization Once I’ve run out of time sketching things out, it’s time to start identifying the material that actually has potential to be made into a larger piece of music. I do this by color coding each region (i.e. sketch) based on how good I think it is. By default all of my regions are blue because it’s soothing for me to look at. All segments that are halfway decent get turned purple, which means I may or may not have a use for it. Everything that sounds amazing and I’m confident in gets coded red. Once that’s done, I version off my session and delete all the remaining blue regions for them to go to unwanted sketch heaven. In Eternity we break music into four basic “types”: town, dungeon, wilderness, and combat. Each major area of the game will have its own unique set of these. The next step for me is to assign each sketch to one of those categories. A sketch in progress. Musical Quilt So I have all these little segments of music and cool little snippets, but I don’t exactly have what you’d consider to be a piece of music. Time to change that! The next step involves stitching all of those little fragments, expanding them where necessary, into a full-fledged piece of music. A lot of mixing and matching goes into this and the process takes me about a half day per 3-5 minute piece of music. I focus a lot on form, pacing, and musical trajectory. Once the form has taken a shape I’m happy with, I separate each voice out into individual track lanes so I can begin the process of digital orchestration. A Word About Templates Prior to working on Eternity I spent a couple of weeks creating what’s known in the digital composing world as template. A template is essentially a collection of sample based instruments that are preloaded into a massive audio project. In my template I have all of the most common instruments found in the orchestra (i.e. winds, brass, percussion, and strings), as well as some less common ones, all set up and mixed in advance. This is done to help minimize the steps I have to take between the spark of inspiration and manifesting that inspiration into music. All in all I have about 150 unique tracks for all the instruments and articulations that I’ll need to write the music for Eternity, though I’ll rarely use all 150 at one time. There are a couple of reasons why using a template is important and they all have to do with speed and convenience. When writing, the last thing you want is to get bogged down with technical issues. Doing so will often destroy the spark of inspiration, which can be a fickle thing. By creating a template in advance you separate the technical from the creative which allows you to focus purely on writing the music. Templates are also critical because modern day multi sample libraries eat up a lot of RAM and take a long time to load. Your average sampled instrument can require anywhere from a couple hundred to a few gigs of memory. (Fun fact: My computer at Obsidian has 32 gigs or RAM installed, and my template uses every last gig!) Needless to say, loading all those samples takes up precious time, and it’s a waste to have to do that over and over. Using all the RAM. Orchestral Colors Back to the music writing... Right now the form of the music has been fleshed out, but it’s still just using piano or string orchestra. This is where orchestration comes in. We often refer to the different ranges and combinations of instruments as having a certain “color”, which is really just a fancy way of saying sonic timbre. You can think of orchestration as being similar to taking a pencil sketch and filling it in with color. The way I like describe this stage of the writing process is that here I have the “bones” of the music all assembled like an archeologist assembles dinosaur bones; it just needs to be “skinned”. At this point I already have a good idea for what the general moment to moment feeling of the music will be, and ideas for orchestration are already beginning to take shape. This is where those references I mentioned earlier on come in handy. What I do is comb through my reference library looking for snippets that will inspire and inform me on how to approach the instrumentation. When I find something suitable I line appropriate reference(s) up against the sketch. A piece in the middle of development. Even though the actual harmonic and rhythmic content of music that I’ve written is quite different than the references I have, I can still use them to extract the orchestral colors the original composer used and apply them to what I’m doing. This helps me to produce the most realistic result possible (remember I’m using samples most of the time) and allows me to get through the orchestration process in the fastest way without spending too much time on R&D. At this stage in the project it’s less important for me to spend a bunch of time trying to come up with the most unique orchestration known to man, than it is for me to get 70% of the way there using a combination that I know will work. I don’t always need to do this for each musical phrase, but it sure comes in handy when I’m stuck. Once the references are all lined up, I start assigning the different layers of music to the instruments that are loaded in my template. Polish In its current state, the music sounds really static and pretty bad. Not ready for prime time. Even though I just assigned the music to different instruments, it’s not quite done yet. For example, phrases lack shape, the mix between instruments is unbalanced, and articulations are all wrong. To fix that, I hand sculpt each individual note and phrase to make it sound more convincing, trying my best to make it sound as if a real live musician were performing the piece (which is actually impossible to do, but that’s the subject for another conversation). This, my friends, is where the music really comes to life. It’s a painstakingly slow and highly detailed process but by the end of it, we’re left with something that actually sounds pretty good! Now I bet you’re wondering how that sounds? Well wonder no more because I’m about to show you! Drum Roll Please... The first region I focused on was Dyrford, and I’d like to share the music that I wrote for the town of Dyrford with you. I hope you enjoy it! Dyrford Village ambient music. Modifications to the Formula While we are following in the footsteps of the Infinity Engine soundtracks in terms of style and implementation, we have decided to tweak that formula a bit. Most of the in-game tracks for the Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale games are between 1-2 minutes in length, and in some cases those tracks loop immediately. There are some inherent risks and benefits to looping a short piece of music immediately. One of the risks is that the music could eventually become annoying to the player if heard too many times in a row. We call this “listener fatigue”, and from a usability perspective, it can negatively affect the way a gamer will feel about a game. It’s a psychological effect; the fact that the music is short and repetitious can make long playthroughs tedious. On the flip side, a benefit to having short loops is that we can write more unique pieces of music, which will by nature increase variety throughout the game. Approaching it this way would allow us to make specific areas feel “special” because they will have unique music. We’re going to balance those two considerations for Pillars of Eternity. Music will always loop, but it will be longer in areas where the player spends a lot of time (like quest hubs) and shorter in areas where the player doesn’t (like some dungeons).

When entering in Sanitarium from the outside (doing the Azo quest) the game is still playing Brackenbury music. Switching floors unfortunately don't trigger the proper music too. The only way to trigger the correct music is to reload a savegame inside the Sanitarium. Same thing happens on Ondra's Gift Lighthouse, during the quest.

Yikes :s I mean, first time I listened to it I was like.. seriously ? BG1-2 had so memorable and engaging combat music and I hoped they could capture the mood, but no.. There's little to none I hate about PoE, but combat music is one of them :s

I was worried when so much time passed before Obsidian showed off any of the game, and now it seems that my anxieties were justified--perhaps if they had been more open with the early development of the game, the main problems that I see in the Backer Beta could have been avoided or resolved. But with less than five months of development planned, it seems very unlikely Obsidian will be able to implement any substantial changes. In the course of my 3 hours with the backer beta, I compiled a fairly big list of bugs, general feedback and suggestions. But by the end of my first ride through the game, I realized that what I saw as the biggest problems with the game would be the most difficult to fix (because so much work has been done already), and also potentially the most detrimental to the overall enjoyment of the game. As you can see from the tags I chose, I am speaking of the visual and audio elements of the game. Specifically: VISUALS The visuals in the "wilderness" (or exterior areas of the first map) are very much lacking in contrast. Maybe I should try "color blind" mode to see if things improve (the game crashed on me before I could try it), but the "normal" visuals should be the "best," right? Well, maybe there was a reason color-blind mode was selected by default. The lack of contrast produces two problems: 1. Terrain is homogeneous. If I can't tell what a tree looks like because it's leaves are the same color as the grass underneath it, and it casts no shadow, there's no point in the tree being there at all. 2. Units/creatures are indiscernible. With the unit selection circles of NPCs/creatures hidden underneath grass, they may as well not exist. Without much contrast between themselves and the terrain, the NPCs/creatures are more difficult to spot than they should be. Superimposing the selection circles on top of the terrain would help some; maybe a small outline or "glow" around the NPCs/creatures would also help them stand out more. As would idle animations. And then there's a visual contrast that is in the game, but that works to its detriment: specifically the environmental animation. The animated water and doodads (like the waterwheel) look absolutely fantastic, but their presence contrasts far too much with the absensce of animation for the rest of the terrain. Contrasted with motionless NPCs, static grass, and unbending trees, the rest of the world looks incredibly lifeless by comparison. If the water is going to move, so should the grass; so should the trees; so should the animals inhabiting the world. MUSIC Maybe this is going to be a controversial opinion. I've seen a couple of people praising the music. Me? I find it to be incredibly bland. The field music is perfectly servicable for what it is--BGM. But the problem is that the title them (the music that plays at the menu) ALSO sounds like background music. The title theme should be the BEST, most memorable track of music in the game. Remember BG2, how each party member had his or her own theme music? Remember how dynamic and memorable those tunes were? Remember the title theme that played every time you launched the game? We all remember that, even years--or decades--after we played the game. BG2's title them was filled with a sense of wonder and grandeur--it was bold and dynamic and promised adventure and excitement. In other words, the title theme immediately set the tone for the adventure that would follow. Compared to the title theme in Pillars of Eternity, which sounds like the same sort of generic background music you'd hear in an Elder Scrolls game while traversing a swamp. There's no dynamism. No grandeur. No promise of bold adventures or sinister plots or romance or tragedy or anything. It's like standing in a medieval elevator. .... And of course, the biggest problem of all is that these aren't really aspects of the game that can readily be salvaged so late in development. It's possible they could crank out a few more tracks of music, and maybe create a decent title theme--but at this point I think we can safely declare it extremely unlikely that Obsidian has the time or resources to re-draw the maps with animated terrain. And I think that's really kind of depressing, because--the countless bugs aside--every other aspect of the game (that I've seen so far) seems to be EXACTLY what a successor to the Infinity Engine legacy should be: lots of roleplaying options, interesting quest design, and extremely well-written dialog. With so much of the game being so good, it's a shame that the most immediately noticeable aspects of the game--the visuals and music--are so lacking.

Hi, is there any chance for game soundtrack? I'd love to have the music (cause it's simply brilliant) on me when moving round town.

The chaff from this morning's work has been the idea of going carolling to collect for Help for Heroes and Age Concern. I was thinking of good songs to sing. I don't think they need to be all trad christmas songs. Indeed I think many folks will give more if we leaven the carols with some fun ones they might actually want to sing to. Ideas? EDIT: Is anyone talented enough to fit Rammstein's 'Du Habst' to the tune of Deck the Halls?

Hi friends. My name is Armand, and I've been doing fan songs in the spirit of Project Eternity. I've done four songs so far, and would like your help in doing a fifth! Let me know what you'd like me to sing about! I'd really like to do something more specific to Project Eternity, but as information is scarce as of yet, I've sorta winged it on the info we've got. So far we've got one song about getting killed by sea monsters, as mentioned in Update #5, a song about a very skilled thief that I recorded for fun, and a song about a strange man that can steal your soul by placing his hand upon your head. I based this on the possibility of having multiple souls in your body at once, as also mentioned by Josh. I imagined a evil magic user of some kind, using Shang Tsung-esque powers to rip souls out, and collect them as his own to draw power from. What could the next song be about? I've been thinking of singing about guns and the veil. Based on the mention of how gun users disable arcane veils in battles against mages by shooting them. Or maybe, a song about the Obsidian Order? Or about Edair's whip-lasso thing!? All ideas welcome, as long as they are related to Project Eternity somehow. I'll be sure to dedicate the song to the forums at the beginning of the clip, and mention and give credit to all who helped in either the description or at the end of the clip! Let the ideas roll in, and feel free to talk amongst yourselves of what you like the best among all the suggestions. Based on that I'll write together a final plot for the song, and if that then gets green lit by you, I'll record and upload it! Song can't be any longer than 2 minutes though. So compress your epics into that time frame. It would be wonderful if we could settle on an idea before Friday, as I'll be gone during the weekend and won't be able to check the forums or record anything during that time. Looking forward to reading your posts! Here's the last song I did! "Stealer Of Souls" -