![]() ![]() To capture as much of this branching story as possible, Wintory plans to release the soundtrack as a series of four albums. And this is just for an early song – as the story proceeds, the number of variables in each encounter only increases. That's at least four times the amount of effort, assuming you don't consider the extra planning needed to coordinate each path. While the song only has three verses, three choruses, two pre-choruses, and a bridge, the number of decisions creates 38 distinct sections of music that must be written and recorded. She can side with her best friend, Freddie, the mischievous idol Pan, or choose to go it alone. Here's another way of looking at the numbers: In one of the earliest songs, Grace is deciding how to proceed. Each of those sections gets its own lyrics and, in many cases, largely altered backing tracks. ![]() Being nice to a character twice in a row is different than being nice, then mean, or vice versa. In many instances, choices you make earlier in the song (and sometimes earlier in the plot) come back to change the responses you currently face. Numbers get this big because it's not as simple as choosing red, blue, or green options. "In the case of the finale of the game, literally tens of millions." "A song that only ever has three options at a time might end up with, quite literally, thousands of permutations," Wintory says. But while Wintory has written music for huge games, such as Journey and Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, there's never been a game with a scale quite like Stray Gods. Wintory is Stray Gods' composer and music director, working closely with the narrative team and a crew of songwriters to assemble the songs and score. ![]() How did they figure out how to write a musical with millions of variations? Music Beyond Measure It's a daunting project, especially for an indie studio's debut game, and raises a question I'm dying to get the answer to: While Wintory doesn't say exactly what turned this friend off from helping with this game, he (along with every other Stray Gods team member I speak to) can't help but bring up the game's mind-boggling scope. ![]() Managing a branching story is a difficult enough task, but injecting a musical element also requires a baffling amount of effort and coordination. Gameplay is a twist on the choice-based role-playing genre in addition to choosing dialogue options during conversations, players pick lyrics during musical numbers, altering the story and the music simultaneously. The world is a modern take on Greek myth, with many classic gods (now known as "idols") appearing, including Apollo, Persephone, and Athena. It follows Grace (played by veteran video game performer Laura Bailey), a woman who must prove her innocence in a murder case using the newly gained powers of a muse, which compels people near her to express themselves in the form of song. The game they would eventually create is Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical. After chatting about their love for musicals (specifically, the musical episode of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer), the partnership between Wintory and Esler's Summerfall Studios was born. At this point, Wintory "literally sprinted" across town to meet with Esler before their flight back to Australia. While his unnamed friend wasn't interested, he did point Wintory towards Liam Esler, a developer with similar ambitions for finding new ways to create choice-based narrative games. He smiles as he tells the story, finding humor in the irony that this rejected pitch eventually became the game I'm currently interviewing him about. "He said very graciously, but in no uncertain terms, 'I hate that idea, and I want nothing to do with that,'" Wintory recalls. Wintory's friend was less than enthusiastic. It was a musical game – not just a game with musical numbers distributed throughout, but where the player has control over the music itself. For composer Austin Wintory, Stray Gods started with a rejected pitch.įive years ago, when he was invited to a pre-GDC meeting to pitch game ideas to an unnamed friend, Wintory had one that really excited him. ![]()
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