Jedi: Survivor Composers Explain What Makes A Score ‘Sound’ Like Star Wars

Star Wars Jedi Survivor is a great game. This is largely because it mimics the Star Wars film style so well. Respawn has gone to extremes in order to mimic the style of one of cinema’s most popular franchises. A good score for a video game must be more than merely a copy of Star Wars. Stephen Barton, Gordy haab and others wrote the music for Jedi: Survivor. When I asked them to describe a great video game score, their answers were unanimous.

“Emotional weight.”

Our interview is done on a video call with each composer in a different location, so the act of them responding with the exact answer at the same time is especially surprising and notable – they later explain that it’s a philosophy they’ve shared while working on the scores for Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and Survivor.

Barton gestures at Haab to elaborate on his point. It’s exactly the same for a film score, he says. The music should bridge the distance between the actor, or in the case of a film the audience and the screen. They want to make the music enhance whatever emotion the protagonist Cal Kestis is experiencing (or anyone else on the screen is feeling) and let the player feel it as well. The music shouldn’t just be a generic combat theme. A fight could be tragic, epic or frantic. The music does not need to be the focus. This is an element which serves the narrative.

Haab & Barton use film to describe their inspiration, and it’s a good idea, since they work on a franchise. The music still has to be “feeling” Star Wars. It’s a filmic quality because it was born on the big-screen. The musicians don’t feel restricted by this framework. Barton says that the concept of “Star Wars Sound” has evolved over time, and especially in recent years.

Barton says, “It is a moving target I find really fascinating.”MandalorianYou can also find out more about the following: Andor There have been some really great examples of what I believe has extended. [the sound]Whereas now, people are like, “Yeah! That’s Star Wars.” If you had told someone 10 years ago that the recorder was going to be an important tool in Star Wars, they would have said, “What?” Really?'”

Haab’s approval is nodded by Haab who, as a veteran of Star Wars video games such as EA Battlefront Series and Star Wars: Squadrons has experience in scoring. He says that “stylistically we take inspiration from things which inspired the original score” rather than sticking to the bones of the original scores.

Jedi: Survivor was the result of the two attempting to “stretch their sound a little bit more.” This is best demonstrated in “A Frontier Welcome.” A bassoon, along with some strings, play a set of unison notes after some dark percussion. The composition starts off with a melody that I wouldn’t associate at all with Star Wars, but then it switches to the iconic Star Wars sound, namely a suspended high-pitched woodwind chord. This piece is a good choice for a musical selection, as it’s played when Cal arrives on Koboh. The music, as Haab & Barton stated, brings player experience and game together.

Haab claims that Fallen Order had a more “hopeful” tone. In contrast, the score to Survivor, in general, has a darker feel. Cal’s situation is far more difficult in Survivor. The game itself is dominated by the Empire and its oppressiveness. Haab explains that the theme was so important, a tune had to be created to reflect the imperial omnipresence.

Haab claims that the shape and contour of the theme resembles the sinus rhythm in a heartbeat. This gives the impression of something pounding constantly in your chest, but in the distance. He goes on to say that it includes all 12 notes of the chromatic scale – in other words, the notes don’t fit cleanly into one key, so the theme is constantly shifting and creates a sense of unease. The Imperial March is not quite as neat as it was in the first trilogy, because the theme doesn’t represent an entire army of Stormtroopers arranged in neat lines. Instead it’s meant to convey the fear of Empire and its despair.

In addition to the new tone of the game, there is a major change in the design of the levels. While Fallen Order opted for a linear world, Survivor offers more areas to the player to freely explore. Barton said that they had more “systemic” music, which was built around logic systems and playlists. Certain music parts will be added or removed depending on the location and activity of the user.

Barton: “We were aware from the beginning that this campaign would be so large.” We don’t ever want to hear the same music more than once. Even coming back to the same location later in the game doesn’t mean the music will be the same – there’s that focus on emotional weight again – because Cal might not feel the same about a certain area after the events of the main story. The planet Koboh, for example, starts out with an “Wild West”, yet when the main storyline becomes tragic, it loses a lot of its whimsy. As a result, both the soundtrack and all the logic systems adapt to this. Barton also says that they are not afraid of letting the soundtrack have a rest sometimes. He points to other sound elements in the game environment which would help immerse the player.

The systemic design of the score means that not all music pieces can be grouped into a single linear track. When it’s time for the soundtrack of the game to be produced, composers will have more work.

Haab has said that “we actually made lists independently and chose pieces of musical material based on their priority.” Then we made lists of our own and compared the results. The eight hours they had of music were eventually reduced to a four hour album. However, the months it took to curate these songs into a coherent narrative was not wasted. They even made soundtrack edits in order to merge several small cues together into one larger track. Track 38 “The Visitor” is a combination of a music cue called “Jedah_700.”

Ultimately, the soundtrack to Jedi: Survivor works so well for the same reason the game as a whole does – it takes classic elements from Star Wars and transforms them into something simultaneously familiar and novel. Haab’s attitude to the project perfectly exemplifies that.

Haab states, “I am using a palette already existing. And now I have painted my original work.” However, I use the same colors.