News
Pièces de Résistance
7 September 2011
Abbey Road and the Neve 88RS establish themselves in the forefront of video game score recording
How much music do you need for a top-selling video game? Prepare to be shocked. ‘I had a long time to write the score for Resistance 3,’ says the composer Boris Salchow. ‘Almost a year. But it also has at least three and a half hours of music in it… so I needed some time to write all that music.’
Resistance 3 – a sequel to the award-winning Resistance: Fall of Man (the first Playstation 3 title to sell a million copies) and its follow-up, Resistance 2 – is a science fiction first person shooter video game and the first in the Resistance series to support 3D. With its theme of small pockets of humans trying to survive an alien invasion, it makes full use of traditional orchestral instruments – low brass, french horns, strings and timpani – to impart tension, impact and humanity. Sachlow recorded his score on the Neve 88RS in Abbey Road Studio One.
‘Recording at Abbey Road, the sound here is just amazing,’ Sachlow continues. ‘But recording in London comes with those players – they blow me out of the water every time I hear them.’
Readers with the appropriate privileges – some of the game’s action isn’t certified for under-16s – can see an interview with Boris Sachlow, including footage of the recording process (and a couple of nice shots of Studio One’s 88RS) here.
Similarly, Richard Jacques had to turn out well over two hours of music for James Bond 007: Blood Stone, another Playstation 3 game recorded at Abbey Road. ‘It’s a huge game, ‘ Jacques says, ‘It follows the make up of the movies, so the music is a really key part of the overall experience.’ It’s a completely new story, and, he adds, ‘There are no themes that come from the films – it’s all original material.’
There is, however, a link with the movies: the Neve 88RS, which, ever since its launch, has been first choice for recording Bond scores. For Blood Stone – nominated for an Ivor Novello award – Jacques recorded the brass in Studio One, using many of the A-list players who have played on every Bond soundtrack.
There was, of course, no doubt of the need for a traditional movie-style soundtrack for LA Noire, a crime thriller game set in 1947 which the Guardian newspaper praised for its ‘embodiment of [the] holy grail’ – a game that is indistinguishable from a film, except that you can control the lead character. Andrew and Simon Hale’s score was again recorded on Abbey Road’s Neve 88RS console in Studio One (with Peter Cobbin engineering) and in Studio Two (with Andrew Dudman engineering). LA Noire duly topped the charts in all major territories upon release, and sales are currently approaching the 4 million mark.
