Doomed Heretic Seeks Country-Born Dark Mage for Companionship, Maybe More

FIRST POST!!!

Not really. [ed. - except yes]. I suppose there should be an explanation about the lack of posts.

Anyway, I've been playing a lot of Doom II and Heretic lately. Meanwhile, my latest and most massivest creative project to date (OK, maybe not really, but this one I actually thought I stood a chance of finishing until more recently), Cletus the Dark Mage, has been languishing. Simply put, I ran out of gas. A friend of a friend of mine had said by way of said friend that he might be interested in doing some voicework, as was potentially said friend. With me? Good. I love being obnoxious. Anyway, this led me to conceive of two different versions of Cletus, the "live" or narrated version that I would tell like a bard or traditional epic story-teller, complete with a largely automated set of original music, and the "radio" version, complete with different voices for different characters and that could be distributed on the internet or a CD or something. Well let me just tell you the radio version is dead. My friend and friend's friend appear to have forgotten or lost interest (forgotten, just verified by gmail chat so maybe we'll see some developments?). Anyway I'm treating the radio version as dead until proven live.

Cletus the Dark Mage, since this is the first time you've probably all heard about it, is an epic tale. Of what exactly I don't want to reveal at this point. I hope to have at least sample versions of some of the music tracks I plan on using for it up soon on the web site; I have one or two tracks which are actually in pretty advanced stages of development, I just haven't messed with them in ages.

In the mean time, you should really download the Adrift text adventure runner and my friend Dan Berlin's game "Give me Your Lunch Money", a tale of an eight-year old inventor's fight against the most heinous of schoolyard injustices. I did the music for it, some of which you can hear on the site, but it was all tailored specifically for this game and most of it from the ground up (although the "flawless victory" chord progression - the first track i worked on, which became minorfied for "a boy's need to set things right" and for the thematic medley to cloudbreaker, the final boss theme, was something i had already been tinkering with on the piano when i started working on the game's score). So you should really experience the music in its native context, is all I'm saying. It really is an engaging and amusing game and can be beaten in anywhere from an hour (if you take your time and maybe get stuck some) to five minutes if you know exactly what you're doing and tear through the thing without experiencing the immersive elementary school atmosphere or listening to the soundtrack (boo!) (Note: this is all assuming you've played a text adventure before! Results may vary for noobs!)

Daniel also recently turned out a halloween-themed game for a contest with a three-hour time-limit, and frankly I'm floored by the quality given the constraints. Now that the contest is over he'll be cleaning it up and reworking it some, and I'll likely be scoring it so keep your heads peeled.

I want to say a little bit more about the music for Doom II and Heretic. Although on the whole I dig Heretic's soundtrack more, one thing I really like about the soundtrack to Doom II is how thematic it is. Not that the composer does much from track to track in terms of weaving them together, but very often tracks will take the form of: Opening statement of theme. Restate theme with different instruments. Modulation of theme optional. Restate theme with different instruments. Restate them with different instruments [[and dynamics]]. Rinse and repeat. Below is a classic example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffl2ShaWyGM&feature=related Not one of the strongest tracks from the soundtrack, but still... [more]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffl2ShaWyGM&feature=related

Not one of the strongest tracks from the soundtrack, but still a good one that illustrates the point. In fact, now that I've done a little youtube research, it would appear that I was wrong. Behold! The following is basically the same song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkhCNx-8Qos&feature=related

Now to me, as a composer, this is not sufficient to call reworking a theme, I guess in part because I come from the Bollywood school of thought that if you're going to make a particular musical theme or set of themes part of your soundtrack you really ought to go ahead and beat the listener over the head with it. Hang on. Listening more now. Okay, never mind. That's got to be deliberate. It's just that I've been playing more Doom (original) in the last few days, and I've noticed how some of the music is annoyingly similar to itself, or to Doom II's music. This feels to me more like Bobby Prince's reusing of a familiar canvas and palette than as a deliberate choice meant to establish or evoke continuity in the game's narrative, train or evoke a common emotional response, or demarcate a certain set of features that the player should pay attention to (Oh Look! It's this music! It must be this kind of level!) By the way fie on you if you would claim that games like Doom don't have a narrative! Fie! I could of course be wrong, but I doubt I could get ahold of Mr. Prince for comment.

Ok, where was I...? I really dig the thematicness of Doom II's soundtrack! It's a great soundtrack for mindlessly blowing away the minions of hell, for which let's face it you don't necessarily want or need a particularly elaborate soundtrack. I think thematic soundtracks are WAY underdone in video games and American movies, and when you do get them, you're likely to have once central theme and that's it. One of the reasons I loved the soundtrack to the first Gears of War was (in addition to being exquisitely orchestrated), there were several themes that were continuously being reworked and developed throughout the epic (if ludicrously implausible) storyline (Really? Us four guys are going to take down a military superpower that's been kicking the shit out of us same four guys plus tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of other trained soldiers since day one? Awesome. I guess sometimes less really is more.) I guess the main ones are the title theme, the locust theme, and the COG theme, but they get a surprising amount of mileage and surprisingly fresh treatment throughout the entire game. That MIGHT actually be all there is even, I just remember they're given the kind of loving treatment that really makes them come into their own by the end of the game and stick in your skull like a meleed grenade. Oh, and for the record, people who say the Halo games have great soundtracks make me want to punch them in the face. Granted I've not played Reach yet, so theoretically those guys could have developed significantly since their last outing, but seriously. Halo has a good soundtrack, I WILL give you that much, now pack up your shit and move on. Also, don't even think about comparing GoW and Halo soundtracks: those guys aren't even in the same galaxy, musically speaking (Oh, and thanks to this entry I now know they changed composers for Gears of War II, from Kevin Riepl to Steve Jablonsky. That pisses me off, no wonder it was nowhere near as good, I thought Riepl was just resting on his laurels since GoW was such a blockbuster.)

Let's go make some themes guyz!!!

And on an utterly tangential note this is a great track from Heretic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K16_mMAo_MY

-R