He's a big green lizard. Or dinosaur. Or iguana - which comes from one of those families. When not destroying Tokyo for the sheer joy of destruction, he's destroying Tokyo to save it. Godzilla. Cult classic and pro(an)tangonist of oh so many excellent fighting games. GamersInfo friends and favorites, Heavy Melody Music, were tagged with the awesome opportunity to create music for the Wii version of this season's Godzilla Unleashed. We just had to ask Executive Producer Chris Peterson what it felt like to work with the big green guy.
GamersInfo.net: How does a sound company known for their work with the Sci-Fi Channel, Sony Vaio, Trivial Pursuit and Neverwinter Nights 2 move to Godzilla Unleashed? Oh, wait…
Chris Peterson: It goes all the way back to when we named the company Heavy Melody. I mean, you wouldn't want a company called "Twinkle Tunes" doing this game would you? Or "Tra La La" or "Boy Band, Inc?"
We actually knew the game's producer, Keehwan Her , from the work we had done together on Neverwinter Nights 2. He's great to work with and was very specific about wanting the music for Godzilla: Unleashed to have a cinematic quality to it. After talking over his vision with him, we all got fired up about working together again.
GamersInfo.net: Why only the Wii? What makes the sound requirements on it unique so that you produced the music for this platform only?
Chris Peterson: I don't think there were any unique requirements that caused us to produce for that platform only. It's just the version we were hired for and I don't know much about the other versions.
GamersInfo.net: We'd talked about distinctive music for the various monsters?
Chris Peterson: Definitely. There are four factions of monsters and each one needed a different style of music to highlight and dramatize its particular characteristics. For example, the Mecha-Godzilla faction consists of robotic monsters, so heavy guitars and mechanistic industrial elements were used. The Alien faction music has strange, otherworldly sounds that are evocative of beings unbeknownst to humanity. That is in stark contrast to the Earth Defenders, who have a more traditional, orchestral score.
Finally, the Mutants have a dissonant, atonal style, meaning the songs have notes that don't quite sound right together. This highlights the unnatural, almost ugly characteristics of those creatures.
GamersInfo.net: Godzilla has been produced and reproduced so many times over the years. Did you take inspiration from any other Godzilla media?
Chris Peterson: Absolutely. We want this music to be new and original but it should also draw from the Godzilla scores of the past. We have huge respect for the Godzilla legacy and we wanted to be sure everything we did was consistent with what makes it great. He's timeless, that big lizard. And like I said before, Keehwan was on the same page with that. He wanted to be sure that the music had a very profound cinematic feel.
GamersInfo.net: You not only created the music for the Wii version, but all of the sound for the promo spot. Did you do anything unique to create the Godzilla (or any other) sound for the trailer?
Chris Peterson: We didn't create Godzilla's ear-splitting roar, but we enhanced it. Mainly, we added a considerable amount of PUNCH to augment what was already there.
It's such a classic scream, isn't it? Who doesn't know that sound? Everybody knows if they ever hear that sound in real life that they should definitely take cover.
We also introduced some more ambient sounds to the video to round everything out and bring the viewer into the environment. In essence, the goal was to take the original sounds and super-charge them!
GamersInfo.net: If you had to assign a monster to each member of the Heavy Melody team, who would they be and why?
Chris Peterson:
I'm a mother of two boys, ages 7 and 10 and live in the chaos that ensues. I've a permanent disability that keeps me homebound, so books, kids, games and books are my constant companions. Oh, and books, too. *grins*
My children both play games so I often play them first, getting to know exactly how something may effect my sensitive and easily stimulated older child vs. my stoic and imperturbable younger.
I like games for games; for the pure enjoyment of them and believe that no game is wholly bad, though some are real stinkers.
I also have the dexterity of a camel in mittens so find playing FPSs difficult (and I also don't like the gore) and RTSs at times can stump me. I just can't seem to move quickly enough to keep up with them. Some of my favorite games are arcade games and I'll spend 3-5 years on the same 5-6 levels because I just never get any better. But, I have fun.
