KINGDOMS OF AMALUR: RECKONING

Opening Cinematic

Siege

Your Fate is your Own

Heart of Amethyn

This Ends Here

The Ships

When it came to writing the music for the various monsters in Reckoning I wanted to really create music that gave the fights as much excitement as possible. I was thinking about where I could draw inspiration from and I started to listen to the action music that John Williams created in so many of my favorite movies, especially the Harry Potter movies as I’m a huge fan of Mr. Potter.

I noticed that in between the big themes he has this really complicated music that is going through lots of ideas in a short space of time and is all over the place, I called it “treading water music” in my own head to give me a term to think about. This music keeps the excitement levels really high without getting in the way of the action on screen and then when the big moment comes he’s right on the money with the a memorable hook.

So this was what was going round my head when I was writing these pieces. Balor was my first attempt at this style of music and I was pleased with the way it turned out, I felt like I’d managed to get a little bit of that John Williams magic in there ….. well …… I thought so anyway ……. Heh!

Dalentarth was more or less the first area of the game to be modeled. When I came to write music for it, my train of thought was along the lines of a dark fairytale, so it looked beautiful and safe but there was an underlying danger.

I wanted to get the sense of magic into the music as well, so as there was a wondrous element in the pieces. There was 13 pieces in all for this area that played randomly on a timer, although the piece that you hear first in the excerpt I have added on this page is the one that was my “first play” piece that is the main theme for this area and so will be heard the most.

Ahhhhhh …… The Plains of Erathell ……. heh! These are probably my favorite pieces from Reckoning. The feel of this area reminded me of the music I’d done for Viva Piñata: so I wanted to write music that was majestic and noble and gave the sense of wide open spaces.

Most of the music is this area uses just the string section of the orchestra, but I did use the woodwinds as well in some of them. I decided to almost exclusively use major chords for all the music although there is the odd minor chord in there too. Again I was thinking about Vaughan Williams’ music as I had in Viva Piñata:, that kind of very English sound that he and Elgar were renowned for.

There’s one piece that I inventively called “Plains 7” that is my favorite out of these pieces, it’s the one that starts about half way through this excerpt.

The main theme to the game is my second attempt as I did write another piece early in the games development but decided I’d have another go as I wasn’t totally happy with it. This theme crops up all over the place, from the cinematics to the boss fights and the ambient pieces. I like to use themes like this to remind you of the game universe you are in as opposed to a lot different regions just stuck together for the sake of it.

I had this piece recorded by orchestra quite early on as a way of letting the team hear what the finished music would sound like. I ended up recording it again when I came to do the final sessions in Prague to make sure all the pieces matched up sonically.

When it came to the cities in Reckoning I wanted to have a strong theme that you would instantly recognize and associate with that place in the game. I wanted them to be short so as to give you a suitable intro to the city as you approached and then stop. I used a toned down version of the themes for the interiors too, I didn’t originally plan on doing this as I’m not a big fan of constantly looping music but after trying it out on one of the cities I liked it so I added similar versions elsewhere. The tone of the music also echoes how the city should feel whether that be happy, sad or otherwise.

Time To Leave is a piece that was added very late in development. The designers had asked for a piece that would give the player a sense of urgency as some situations in the game required that. I literally had no time to write it as the final cut off date for delivering music to the orchestrator(Nic Raine) was really close. I can honestly say it took me ten minutes to write it as it’s pretty simple. Ironically it became a favorite of lots of people at Big Huge Games ….. typical! It just goes to show that sometimes your first idea is your best idea!!

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