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(Image: SONY)

When Horizon Zero Dawn was released earlier this year, few people could have anticipated the success Sony's new PS4 exclusive could have generated.

The brainchild of Dutch developers Guerilla Games - best known for the Killzone franchise - Horizon's launch in March would see it go on to become the best-selling launch of an original IP on the PlayStation 4. No small feat.

Complementing the action was a blistering score, which saw composer Niels van der Leest teaming up with Joris de Man, a stalwart of Guerilla’s Killzone franchise, and composer duo 'The Flight' (Joe Henson and Alexis Smith), who are best known for their chilling work on Creative Assembly's Alien: Isolation.

The end result is one of the year’s most striking game soundtracks and one that has rightly gone on to receive significant praise of its own.

Fresh from their recent win for Best Original Score at the 12th Annual Jerry Goldsmith awards, Paul Weedon sat down for a chat with the team that made it all possible - including music supervisor and senior sound designer Lucas van Tol - inviting them to reflect on the process of bringing Horizon’s unique world to life.

*** Horizon Zero Dawn: The Frozen Wilds is out November 7th - Take a look at what's in store in the gallery below ***

Congratulations on the score, guys. Firstly, talk me through how you all initially came to be involved.

Joris de Man: Lucas had already hired Niels van der Leest to write diegetic music – the music that takes place inside the game world, performed by player characters – and some percussive hunting music, but there was a realisation that the scope of the project would require multiple composers with different, unique styles. I had worked with Guerrilla on the first three Killzone games, but as Horizon: Zero Dawn was such a vastly different game with a unique set of musical requirements, they wondered whether I would be able to make the shift from the orchestral mayhem they’d previously known me for. Thankfully, after pitching a few pieces of music they decided I was able to rise to the challenge.

The Flight: We were asked by Lucas to write three short pieces, inspired by some early gameplay videos he sent us. We came on about six months after Joris, at which point the game was into its final couple of years of development. To begin with, the plan was going to be for us to concentrate more on the ambient side of the world and the machines, but as we went along both Joris and ourselves ended up working on a bit of everything. There are only so many robot battles one composer can take on.

And Lucas, when you started out I understand you didn’t initially have any particular composers in mind?

Lucas van Tol: No, we didn’t start with composers in mind at all. We started with a short bulletpoint list of things we wanted to achieve with the music. We wanted music to sound a bit different from other games in the same genre, and we wanted to avoid the stereotypical blockbuster symphony sound… Before we started looking into the soundtrack, Niels and I did a couple of weeks of research into tribes and their music. What could we learn about tribes in our world? How did location for instance influence the kind of instruments they made? From that, we came up with a few rules on what we wanted to do with our music and we started to get an idea on the kind of music we would want to use.

So how did you go about choosing a composer, or composers, rather?

Lucas van Tol: We approached a couple of composers and we asked them to do a music test. In the case of Joris, it’s no secret that he was an old Guerrilla family friend, so it might look as if he was an obvious choice. But you also have to consider the fact that we were launching our first new I.P. in a long time, and that almost everything in that concept was a counter-reaction to having worked on Killzone for such a long time. I also knew that pushing composers out of their comfort zone often leads to really interesting results, so we tested him and were immediately convinced.

Joris himself actually proposed The Flight. They had wanted to work with each other for a while now, and since we wanted our composers to collaborate with each other as much as possible for this project, this seemed like a very good foundation. Stylistically, The Flight are very different from Joris, but when you put their music back to back it does live in the same sonic world.

So Joe, Alexis and Joris, what were your reference materials when you came on board?

The Flight: We had access to a wide selection of concept art, videos and presentations describing the main tribes and regions of the game, but by the time we all met up in Amsterdam they had an early playable version of the game. It is by far the best way to get a sense of the scale, scope and feeling of a game, and we spent many hours exploring.

Joris de Man: One thing that struck me the first time I got some material they sent over was the richness and expansiveness of it all. Guerrilla Games really left no stone unturned in working out the lore, environments, tribes and inhabitants of this post-apocalyptic world. The artwork was fantastically rich and detailed, and the hallways of their offices were covered with large mood boards of the environments so that inspiration was only a glance away.

What did the initial brief entail? Were there any particular touch points from previous works that the team was keen to draw on?

Lucas van Tol: The brief was intentionally pretty vague on the music side. I tried to steer the music trajectory as much through context as possible and as little actual feedback on notes as possible. We hired composers because they are the music experts. If they don’t write what we want them to write, there is probably something we didn’t communicate properly to them. For most of the time, this worked great and I think the composers felt very involved in the team.

The Flight: There wasn’t really any reference to previous works - they were very keen to create something original-sounding. We were asked to be subtle in the exploration pieces, using very sparse arrangements and avoiding the standard ‘Hollywood blockbuster’ sound. There were times when Lucas would say that he wanted to hear something that no-one had ever done before, which was quite a challenge in 2016.

Joris de Man: Lucas prepared a sort of music design document that conveyed the different types of musical styles they wanted us to touch on. The idea was that, depending on which area the player was in, the music would hint at some of these styles without fully going into one direction or any particular ethnicity. The guys at Guerrilla Games were very specific that should have a smaller, more intimate sound than we had in the Killzone series, which had a massive live orchestra and choir that we recorded at Abbey Road. On Horizon: Zero Dawn I chose a small selection of live players on flute, strings, percussion and vocals that we recorded in a variety of boutique studios, as well as circuit bent synths.

It’s an eclectic score. Were there any sounds or musical themes that they were particularly keen for you to avoid?

The Flight: We tried to avoid using too many recognisable contemporary or traditional instruments. We discussed with Lucas how music might have been played in the world, imagining how someone would play a particular instrument if they had never seen one before. One of our key discoveries was using a cello bow on a resonator guitar, and then layering this up with multi-tracked harmonicas and synth pads. This gave us what we called the ‘Horizon String Orchestra,’ which is a unique sound.

Are the audio team quite iterative when it comes to what they want musically? How did they go about providing feedback?

The Flight: We had weekly Skype meetings where we would talk about the pieces we had been working on, and they would give their feedback. It is always a collaborative process working on a game as the music is there to fulfill a certain role. They would try the pieces in-game and let us know what was working and what wasn’t. Some things we got first time, others took longer.

Lucas van Tol: We give them the context and we discuss style. Sometimes we’d mention that we would like the composers to collaborate on certain pieces as well. Exploration pieces are probably the most free pieces to work on. The high-visibility E3 trailer music pieces were probably the hardest to work on and needed a lot more iteration on them. Firstly, because the actual content of a trailer tends to change up until the last moment and, secondly, because there are a lot more people involved in trailer work

Horizon: Zero Dawn [PlayStation 4]

Horizon: Zero Dawn [PlayStation 4]

On that note actually, how did the collaborative process work between you. How was the work on different aspects of the score divided among you?

Joris de Man: We had a massive spreadsheet with sections for the different zones, and would get particular pieces assigned per zone. For example, in one zone I might do more of the slower exploration music, whereas The Flight might get more of the combat music, and vice versa in the next zone… Lucas tried to assign it so it would play to our individual strengths. The Flight were very good at creating unique organic textures using a variety of real instruments and synthesized sounds, whereas my strength was in creating strong melodic themes and emotional underscore.

How did the overall composition process work? Did you develop large suites of music that the audio teams would draw from?

The Flight: It depended on what part of the game we were working on. The exploration music tended to be written in suites that could be broken down into many different, shorter pieces, whilst the action music had to work as loopable sections that could keep going until the player defeated the enemy. In addition to these, there were many cinematic scenes that were written directly to picture, as with film or TV work.

Joris de Man: There was a variety of material to compose for. Smaller pieces included short vignettes that got used for what they called 'magic moments' - a beautiful vista or scenic reveal, combat pieces, and like the guys mentioned, cutscenes. Once I established the Main Theme, I found I could draw upon it in all sorts of situations and contexts.

On a much more general note,Horizon has been overwhelmingly well received. How has it been to see that audience reception unfold?

The Flight: The reception has been amazing. It was a huge gamble for Guerrilla to make a brand new game of the scale of Horizon: Zero Dawn. Lucas and everyone else there has been fantastic to work with, and we now really feel like we are part of the family.

Joris de Man: It's the stuff of dreams. Throughout development, this game had a buzz about it, but it's hard to know right up until the end how it will work out. I remember The Flight and myself sitting in Lucas' office having a first proper playthrough of the final game after one of the first press events, and I had to make some sort of excuse as I was practically in tears. The originality and scope were quite overwhelming and the way it all worked together was just gobsmacking. When you work on a game for years, you sometimes can't see the wood for the trees, and are so focused on your own little area that you on occasion forget it's part of a larger process - it was quite humbling to be able to take a step back and appreciate the sum of its parts. It's fair to say it was a labour of love for all involved.