The Making of the Quest for Glory V Soundtrack

I started with a handful of musical sketches - rough arrangements done on synthesizers - and put them out on our Quest for Glory V website. Then, I invited the fans of the series to listen to them and give me their feedback. It was a bold move, to put something so raw out there. But people responded like crazy. I received hundreds of e-mails, and surprisingly, most were very positive.

But there was one area where I totally missed the boat, and the fans let me know about it, in no uncertain terms. My Quest for Glory V overture was not what the fans wanted, nor expected. This was primarily because I left out the traditional Quest for Glory theme. I had always planned to include the theme later in the game, but I wanted to write my own overture. The fans would have none of that self-serving nonsense! They wanted their theme in the overture, and that was all there was to it. Some of them were very explicit about it. So I re-wrote the overture, included the original theme, and sent a copy to a select group of the toughest, most critical respondents. Every single one of them wrote back to me and expressed their approbation for the new overture. When that happened, I figured it was OK to keep it.

Also, there's the sheer mass of a game score compared to a film score. A film typically includes 45-70 minutes of music broken into 15-20 different tracks. Quest for Glory V has over two hundred distinct cuts of music, presented in a non-linear fashion, in an attempt to cover 40-50 hours of entertaining game play. This all makes for a great deal of complex scoring. In fact, I'm still churning stuff out.

First, I've developed "global music sets" for each of the major areas in the game. For example, when the character first encounters the island of Silmaria, there is a specific piece of music that "welcomes" the player to the island. As the character explores, there are twenty different variations of that piece that fade in and out. We've programmed it so that there will be no repetition. And the music disappears completely from time to time, allowing the ambient sounds of each area to speak, and giving the player's ears a welcome rest from the drone of music. During the nighttime, a completely different set of music will play, giving the same area an entirely different mood.

In several areas, such as the Dryad Woods, the Oracle Island, and the Gnome Ann's Land Inn, there are unique musical events that are designed to occur only once. These are scattered throughout the game, offering a fresh supply of musical rewards waiting to be discovered. For instance, one of the puzzles involves a woman's voice heard through the trees. As the hero unravels each part of this puzzle, a new line will be sung to form the melody of a song that is only called forth once the puzzle is completed…

Some music is scripted to play only at certain important times when the game needs to evoke a certain, specific emotion. As an example, there are a series of scenes with Katrina the vampire, each with their own different musical underscore suited to the specific mood of the scene.

Lastly, I've occasionally used the old traditional Music Loop. However, by writing in a non-rhythmic, constantly modulating, and /or ambient style I hope to make these few loops unnoticeable, or at least irrelevant. These loops are generally reserved for places and events that are not meant to drag on too terribly long...