Storm of Zehir Released!

Greetings my friends! A bit under the gun and behind it all but at last I'm able to report that my second effort at Obsidian is now in stores: Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir.

Another romp through the Forgotten Realms, this game takes a different tack than the others with an overhead map view rather than the typical Neverwinter Nights "close" party view camera and travel on a map (which oddly enough was what Curse of the Azure Bonds did even though it felt a lot more open world-ish back then). I feature as the voice of Volothamp Geddarm and wrote a couple of tunes, so not as involved composer-wise, but the soundtrack I must say is a step up from the last one: written by Rob King and Paul Romero (main theme), Andrew Barnabas and Paul Arnold (overland map + several others, particularly Crystal Caves which is gorgeous) and newcomers Kevin Chow and his team at Rogue Dao, the soundtrack with guidance from myself and lead designer Tony Evans is one of the best fantasy RPG soundtracks I've heard, let alone had the honor of working on.

A promotional release is on its way from Atari so stay tuned, once that happens I will distribute a few select tracks right here on CS.

The reviews seem to enjoy it! Admittedly our voice acting was not up to par, partly because of a disastrous writing schedule / pipeline which I'll detail later (it is a huge post in and of itself), and because I dared go non union as well as not be nearly as hands on. Overall not bad but a few voices really stick in the mind as pretty lousy. Still fortunately it doesn't drag the score down and the soundtrack more than makes up for it. While I've no wish to anger those who demand higher rates, the soundtrack was written for less than 50k that got us over 55 minutes of great music. A triumph of "less is more".

IGN: "The audio features some epic, Hollywood-esque fantasy music."

Gamespot: "The soundtrack is absolutely brilliant. This subtle, sweeping score is right up there with the best that Hollywood has to offer, giving you something to hum long after you've shut down the game. "

Now go out and buy it!

Comments

[suneel]

ugh another fantasy rpg :(( , when are you going to compose for real games? not knight/elves/wolfs/faries...etc . real games like scifi rpg(mass effect) or fps? i am tired but, waiting patiently for that day. demand your employer to give you full control of music/sfx :D

alex did you know ign and gamespot reviews are 100% pure BS? they are paid to write fake reviews by the sponsors.

anyways i am curious to listen to the soundtracks that you will post.

[Jayson Napolitano]

Hey, Congrats Alex. Looking forwarded to hearing the score. I thought the samples from the last game sounded pretty awesome too. Sounds like a big team on this one, and sheesh, I never knew music could get so expensive!

Hope things are going well for you. Looking forward to hearing your tracks.

[asker]

Hi Alex. You stated in a previous blog post that you wrote two of the game's soundtrack pieces. As a devoted Brandon-fan, I feel I must know which ones they are. Overall, I must say the soundtrack is incredible. You and your crew did an awesome job.

Sincerely
asker

[AlexBrandon]

"Real" games, suneel? Elitist much? ;) It'll please you to know I'm working on bits for the Aliens RPG score. Also reviews are definitely influenced but mostly by the editors, not by the sponsors. If money was involved then a game like Test Drive Le Mans for the Dreamcast would not get a 96 score on Gamespot.

To respond to asker I wrote two themes for SoZ: the Priory of the Depths and the more generic "Dungeon 4" piece that is used in several randomly generated quests on the overland map. I'm feverishly working with Atari to get this soundtrack released but simply put, the process is a REAL pain in the ass. :(

[suneel]

:) real games like those that have a unique atmosphere or concept. i guess have a sever allergic reaction to knight/elves/wolfs/faries..types.

hey man its good to know your working on the alien rpg, brightening news. this is the kind of project i would definitely want to see you work on. such rpg projects create situations for a great atmosphere and character bonding/gameplay/interaction with audio.

looking at the amount of advertising going on at gamespot or ign its a no brainer somehere down the line some one gets paid to display biased content. let us look at the recent farcry 2 game that got a 9+!! lol so many gamers rate it a 5-6. plus they even control your posts there, so it is monitored. i get mine from videogamessuck where a gross but more realistic picture is painted, be warned thought you may be repulsed by the bad language there. by skimming thru the review you get the idea. btw i am not promoting that site, neither am i in any way affiliated with it. i just go there to get a good laugh and ofcourse unbiased add free reviews.

cheerio merry xmas!

[Alexander Brandon]

Suneel your words have struck a chord. I wrote about this recently in Gamasutra in my expert blog (which I actually should announce here), the post is titled "Reinventing Fantasy".

I also realized that with the reviews comparing the soundtrack to a Hollywood score (which in all honesty it really can compare to... not tv but there are songs there that easily eclipse the soundtrack from a movie like Eragon and even, dare I say it, LOTR? (was never a big fan of Shore)... and it was done.. for LESS THAN FIFTY FUCKING THOUSAND DOLLARS. Now, having said that I would have liked the amount to have been twice as much to adequately compensate the people who bent over backwards to get this stuff to me, but certainly not 7 plus million dollars as you see some "cough" composers negotiating.

Eat it, Hollywood.

[Ovocean]

I'm a player of Nwn2 and a true lover of music and rich atmospheres, coupled with being a demanding perfectionist and I just wanted to drop my very positive opinion to the makers of SoZ score. I agree with you, it's one of the best game scores I've heard, along with Baldur's Gate, Diablo, Sanitarium, Ultima IX, Deus Ex (wow ! just discovered you're the composer), Uru, Planescape Torment... Alright, the list goes on but SoZ is definitely among the top with an impressive number of varied, complex, fresh, intense, thrilling tracks. Ah, I wish I was english literate enough to describe my feelings correctly...
I'm amazed by the overall cohesion of it all considering how many different people and studios joined the effort !
Also, I was going to say that the music fitted the game's setting very well, but it's in fact more the opposite since the music is responsible of over 80% of the feelings and emotions I've had while playing. The Shipwreck theme, Samarach and Swordcoast tavern themes, Beach ambiant, Plains, Crypt, Lantan, Priory, Crystal Caves... so many new feelings added to my collection of the finest !
One great thing is the use of real and rare instruments. I can tell you that my ears love this !

Hollywood can go hide, indeed.

My preferred ones are Crystal Caves (gorgeous yes, so inspired), Beach ambiant (this one's cast a Bliss spell on me :o) and Lantan (full of the emotions of everyday life in an unsual, rustic foreign land). Can you tell me who composed the last two ?
Plains is maybe the one that represents for me the best the atmosphere of the old-school D&D light-hearted adventures. I can really feel the fresh winds of high passes and vast lush plains transporting scents of enchanted nature, swelling my ragged cloak while I gallop freely through lands and strange encounters. *Shivers*
Hm, too bad Dungeon 3's ending hasn't be more exploited, it's so good !

Hopefully one day I'll have the skills to compose such marvels but it's a bit frightening, seen from below. :oq

Cheers !

PS: Any chance you're using Renoise ? It's the best tracker out there, by really far.

Sidenote: Argh ! how frustrating it is to post comments to old blog entries ! You never know if the addressee will be notified or if you're just filling a dump of data on a remote server that's never to be scrolled through by an intelligent being.