DSIII co-composer Tim Wynn interview at SEMO

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http://www.squareenixmusic.com/features/in...s/timwynn.shtml

Matt: To close the interview, I'd like to discuss your recently released work on Square Enix's Dungeon Siege III. How did you mark this long-awaited revival musically? What moods and styles were required to complement Obsidian Entertainment's beautiful world?

 

Tim Wynn: I think you hit it on the head with the word "beauty". The beauty aspect was very high on our list of goals to aim for. Scott Lawlor, the music head at Obsidian, was playing with tracks from Jason Graves and myself. That is how we both wound up working on it together. My music worked great for some parts of the game while Jason's worked well for the others. We started meeting at the Obsidian office in Irvine so we were able to see the unbelievable artwork for the game. It was easy to be inspired by the environment there to explore different musical ideas.

 

The score isn't a clash of different styles, or a blend of any one type of score Jason and I tried to add elements of a lot of different genres to create an interesting canvas for Dungeon Siege III. We put in a lot of a mystical and ethnic elements together because there was so much world to explore.

 

Because we had worked together on Tiberian Twilight, Jason and I already had a strong connection. We talked about the score and came together with Scott Lawlor to identify the things that we each wanted to do and how best to pull it off. I ended up doing a lot of the thematic parts and all of the movies and menus. Jason wound up scoring the action themes and other aspects. It came down to a pretty good split. And my hat is off to Scott and Jason for doing such an amazing job.

 

 

Matt: There have been numerous developments in terms of adaptive scoring since Dungeon Siege II was released. Did you reflect this while scoring Dungeon Siege III?

 

Tim Wynn: Absolutely. We wrote music that had many layers so that you could trigger any of the colors at any time based on what was happening on the screen. Scott Lawlor and I met while working on an EA game back in 2007. Our main focus on that project was to make the music fit the gameplay flawlessly. For Dungeon Siege III, Jason and I went out of our way to ensure that the music would fit every style that the game needed. Writing it was a little tricky because we had to make sure that the music could be recombined or relayered and stripped down or augmented by any of the colors. This ultimately helped propel the music and the game. I am not 19 hours into playing the game yet, but from the small sampling that I've seen, it's really neat to see how your music gets morphed into this piece that loops and evolves with the gameplay.

 

 

Matt: So far, no announcement has been made about a soundtrack release for the game. Would you like selections of your music to be compiled on to an album, or do you think the score principally works best as a contextual experience?

 

Tim Wynn: We (Jason, Scott and I) would like to see it become a soundtrack. I think it could be a project akin to The Batman Begins series where every track was attributed to James Howard and Hans Zimmer.

 

Collaboration used to be, I don't want to say frowned upon, but more than one composer on a project wasn't as widely accepted as it is now. There used to be just one guy writing everything but now people realize that because there can be two or three editors on a film, why can't there be two composers on the score? Batman Begins is a perfect example. James doesn't need to share it with Hans, and Hans doesn't need to share it with James. They're both unbelievably talented guys and could do an amazing job by themselves. But the combination of both of their talents created an unbelievable piece of work. Sometimes you want to do it all yourself, but in my experience, a team effort has been tremendously positive and rewarding especially when there is a free flow of ideas.