I’ve Been Working on Starfield for 7 Years. Music for Fallout 3 Had to Be Written in Months
Inon Zur, a world-famous composer and longtime collaborator with Bethesda, in a conversation with Gamepressure.com, shared the behind-the-scenes of creating soundtracks for his most popular video games.
It would seem that composing music (not only for video games) can be a truly time-consuming task. It's true, but there are cases where the composer must create a specific work in a very short time.
Inon Zur – the creator of music for such series as Dragon Age, Syberia, Baldur's Gate, or Fallout – has agreed to have an interview with Gamepressure.com. During the conversation, he revealed that although working on a soundtrack typically takes a few years, there were moments when Zur had to operate under enormous time pressure. Such a situation occurred with Fallout 3, when Bethesda contacted the composer about four months before the game was completed. What’s interesting, is that the soundtrack for the 2008 game is the one that Zur remembers the most sentimentally.
My first Fallout was Fallout Tactics. Fallout 1 and 2 were created by Interplay and Mark Morgan. So, when Interplay approached me during the production of Tactics, they did it with a clear plan and intention, because they wanted the soundtrack to be different from previous games. I created a very raw, percussive, ambient soundtrack for this game. When it was completed, I thought I was done with Fallout.
In 2004, Bethesda acquired the rights to the Fallout series. You know, all the compositions I worked on for Bethesda, I started creating 4 years earlier. With the exception of Starfield, because I started working on it 7 years ago, in 2016. I started composing for Fallout 4 in 2011, and it was released in 2015. But Fallout 3? Well, they contacted me urgently about 4 months before the game was finished! I had to create this soundtrack very, very rapidly – I was very excited; if you listen to the soundtrack of Fallout 3, you will understand that it was basically my most important soundtrack of all the Fallouts. Because it created a new aspect of the soundscape for Fallout, and most importantly, established the main musical theme. Fallout and Fallout 2 didn't really have such a thing.
Considering that Zur has been working on Starfield's soundtrack for over 7 years, it seems truly impressive and praiseworthy that the composer was able to condense this process to just a few months with Fallout 3. People who have had the pleasure of playing that game may agree that it didn’t affect the quality of the work in a negative way.
In the end, let's remember that the above excerpt is just a part of the interview with Inon Zur. The entire conversation is available here.
