How Stray Gods’ cast influenced music director Austin Wintory’s score

Stray Gods The Roleplaying Musical Has a secret weapon up its sleeves: its star-studded cast.

Just a short glance at the credit list from Summerfall Studios’ new game reveals some impressive choices. The cast includes fan favorites like Laura Bailey and Janina Gavankar from Critical Role, as well as English actor Rahul Kohli, who appeared in Netflix’s Midnight Mass. Cast is a clear flex in terms of talent. What’s less obvious are the ways in which these cast members actually shaped the final game.

Music director Austin Wintory — the only video game composer whose work (on Travelling is a great way to meet new people.) has been nominated for a Grammy before 2023 — told Polygon that Stray Gods’ actors didn’t “just come in, read it, and bail out.” They actually played a central role in shaping the final sound of their characters and the songs they sang. Wintory had to go back and redo the concept for whole songs. They changed everything. Stray GodsThis is a giant interactive music with the score in front of you.

The following are some of the ways to get in touch with us Stray Gods The Roleplaying MusicalThe characters in the comic book style animated scenes sing dramatic numbers. Grace is the main character of this game. Grace finds herself in the middle a drama involving Greek Gods who are secretly hiding amongst regular people. Stray Gods’ crown jewel is a soundtrack that adapts to players’ decisions in real time. Players can choose different lyrics mid-song as the story progresses. The story and score change depending on the player’s choices.

Summerfall Studios/Humble Games

Wintory began by making scratch recordings in a band. He told Polygon that he and the team recorded the demos in an “intentionally neutral” way so that the cast members just heard the basic melody and lyrics. After recording was complete, he would bring those simple recordings to each cast member and allow each actor to play with the song from the perspective of their role, trying to find the “vibe” of each character.

Wintory originally imagined Medusa’s number as an electronic track with a hypnotic sound. At that point in the game, the protagonist has traveled to a place called the Viper’s Nest; she’s supposed to feel uneasy, like she’s in hostile territory. This concept was represented by basic piano chords in the scratch demo. Anjali recorded.

“We get Anjali Bhimani in the booth. “And the first word out of her lips was [Wintory does his best Eartha Kitt impression]: ‘I thought it would be fun if Medusa speaks with a kinda Eartha Kitt quality.’” She sang a bit so Wintory and his team could hear the results: “And we were like, The world has changed.. It was so good. We’re just falling all over ourselves dying laughing, and it was also creepy in this interesting way. She’s just fucking awesome.”

For the other characters, like Kohli’s take on the Minotaur, the score didn’t require as much of a rewrite; instead, Wintory pulled back some of the instrumentation to let the singer shine.

“Kohli as the Minotaur was infinitely funnier than we all thought that scene could be,” said Wintory. “And it totally changed how I approached everything about it afterward. I thought it would need to have a bit of musical humor. He was hilarious, I thought. Actually, I can now play it kind of straight, musically, because he doesn’t need help. I don’t need to sell anything here.”

Summerfall Studios/Humble Games

Wintory was asked by Polygon what video game developers could, in general, learn from musical theatre. “The aphorism would be, ‘If you can’t say it, you sing it. If you can’t sing it, you dance it,’” Wintory said. “That’s a classic aphorism in the world of musicals. Games sometimes don’t trust themselves to let certain constituent parts take over in that way.”

When game designers do make an effort to harmonize these “constituent parts,” the result is worth it. Wintory explains by using a personal story. Travelling is a great way to meet new people.It was interesting to see how the developers redesigned a later scene in order to make it fit with a song he wrote. The developers listened to his track and what started out as a simple, quiet moment became a moment of almost divine beauty.

Before you Stray Gods, Wintory had worked on soundtracks for different genres of games with vastly different soundtracks, but he hadn’t worked on a score for a musical in this capacity.

“You look at musicals, where they’ll write it, then they’ll workshop it, and the cast will have ideas. They’ll workshop it for people and the audience members will say, ‘I didn’t really understand what the point of that character was.’ And you say, ‘OK, maybe we cut [a character].’ And of course games do play testing, and all that sort of thing. But all the component parts being made to kind of dance together more, and trust each other more, would be great.”