Click to watch embedded media A good soundtrack can make or break a gaming experience. Pairing the right sounds to the perfect scene is imperative, and setting the stage for what the player feels is an incredibly powerful — and sometimes daunting — task. With Cyberpunk 2077 just around the corner boasting some killer tunes, we sat down with the OST team to learn more about the inspiration behind the sounds of Night City.
Speaking with Marcin Przybyłowicz (The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt), P.T. Adamczyk (Gwent: The Witcher Card Game), and Paul Leonard-Morgan (Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II), we learned a ton about the tracklist for the highly anticipated action-RPG. While “cyberpunk” tropes may instantly bring to mind such scores as Blade Runner or Deus Ex, this talented team of composers drew inspiration from all sorts of sources, including draws from jazz, through downtempo, hip-hop, metal, industrial, to various incarnations of 90’s techno (rave, trance, etc.); putting an unexpected modernized spin to everything while still keeping a cinematic vibe that pushes and informs the narrative and action.
Ready to learn more about the sounds of Night City? Let's dive right in!
The three of you have an impressive background, can you talk a little bit more about how you knew composition was the right path for you and about where it all started?
P.T: I started out as a drummer although I always wanted to write music. The idea of being a composer felt so surreal, that I put this dream on the shelf and became a session drummer for Poland’s top rap artists. In my early 20’s I started doing music for commercials, shorts, and things of that nature. That gave me a confidence boost and I realized that maybe I can do that. I put my drumming career on hold and followed the composer path. I relocated to LA in 2015. I studied at USC’s SMPTV program, did some ghostwriting, some additional arrangements, small short movies, and things of that caliber, and in mid-2017 I got a job as an in-house composer at CDPR and I moved back to Poland to work on Gwent, Thronebreaker and eventually Cyberpunk 2077
Leonard-Morgan: I studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. Glasgow has a phenomenal music scene, and I started working with a ton of bands back then. I started out by scoring a few films (my first one got me a BAFTA), and then it really just took off from when I scored the film Limitless with Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro, and then Dredd.
Przybyłowicz: For me, it all started back in music college. I figured out I'm not that great of a musician on instruments, but I was quite OK with writing and arranging music. That eventually pushed me to game music, kind of an obvious thing at the time. I've been playing games since I was seven. I worked on several smaller titles for a few years, and in 2011 I joined CD Projekt RED and we've been working together ever since.
How has your approach to game composition evolved with each new project?
P.T: I think because of the experience you gain with every project you become slightly more confident with the decisions you make even if they might seem unproductive or just stupid to an outsider. For example, I did a lot of research before jumping into CP2077, I figured out my core set of instruments and I spent the first 6-8 months learning how to use them. I would press record and just jam with them, then save the bits I liked and then move to a different instrument. If I haven’t had the experience that would seem counterproductive to me, cause I would be worried about not starting with “the theme”, but I knew that this could be an equally valid point of entry and “the theme” will get discovered somewhere into the process.
Leonard-Morgan: I’ve scored a few games before (Battlefield Hardline and Warhammer: Dawn Of War 3), and with each of those, I’ve been learning about the technical aspects of composing for games. But what I’ve found the most fun part in them all (including Cyberpunk) is coming up with the sound for the game. In Cyberpunk, the three of us were playing with all our synths and experimenting for about 6 months at the start of the process. It’s so important to find a unique sound, and, particularly for a game the size of Cyberpunk, it’s a challenge to create something that hasn’t been done before.
Przybyłowicz: I think it always evolves — every project is different, even if it’s a part of a franchise. It brings different artistic and technical challenges. After years spent on The Witcher, I had to rethink my approach before starting doing anything on Cyberpunk 2077. It’s a completely different universe, characters, story, everything. Plus, the music we’ve made is so different from anything I’ve ever done personally.
With a game like Cyberpunk 2077, there is a grittiness heard in the tracks, and it's not the obvious sounds people might expect from an experience in this genre. What was the creative process like when nailing down the sounds of Night City, especially when looking at how different the three of your tracks are from one another?
P.T: All the inspiration comes from the game. Whether it’s Mike Pondsmith’s lore, or quest design, concept art you cannot complain about a lack of inspiration while working on a game like CP2077. Grittiness and the hard-hitting beats and bases were our response to the world and the stories that were presented to us. This is not a digital, sci-fi cyberpunk, it’s not retro-futuristic cyberpunk. It’s a special, singular take on the genre, that dares to create a new paradigm. So, as a composer, when you’re tasked to create a musical score for a game like that, you have to give it all you got and look for uncharted musical territories.
Leonard-Morgan: Going back to that whole trying to create a unique sound thing, one of the things we quickly realized was that we wanted to avoid an 80’s synth vibe – it’s been done before, Blade Runner, etc, but synth/electronica definitely plays a big role in our process. But we processed and crushed so many of our sounds on this. From drums to electric cello, to all our synths – distortion can be beautiful. And so many of the sounds that we created was from a process: for example, I would feed my moog into my matrixbrute, then into my vocoder, then finally into this wonderful synth called a Folktek. It was all about creating a hard, edgy sound for Night City. Throbbing Basslines and weird distortion
Przybyłowicz: I think that’s one of Night City’s highlights — musical variety within a very well defined soundscape. Both the story and the city itself are soaking with exciting moments for the composer. It’s not always about the action — sometimes it’s the color, or what’s being said in dialogue lines. Whatever it is, it makes your mind go places. Once you realize what the story is really about, and how it’s executed, you know where that grit comes from.
When composing for a game that has this much of hype behind it, what does a typical workday look like for you?
P.T: For the past 6 months we’re in playtesting mode (at least Marcin and I) so everything is pretty normal. We just play the game a lot and tweak things according to our music design. Earlier, when I was actually writing and producing the music it was a workday like any other :) cause you know, when you’re in the middle of the ocean, it doesn’t matter how deep it is, you just have to make it safely to the shore :). But in all seriousness, more than anything, the hype is a great motivator. It pushes you to give 100% every day and not cut corners and do everything to justify the anticipation. I felt really lucky to work on this game and the support we got from gamers was overwhelming.
Leonard-Morgan: Hype doesn’t really come into it – you just keep your head down in the studio and be creative. There’s no point thinking “I wonder if the millions of fans will like this”. You’ve just gotta stay true to your artistry/what you believe in and hope that people like it! A typical day would be me looking at a new scene which I’ve been sent a rough movie for (CDPR are in Warsaw, and I’m in LA, so the time difference means that we’ve kind of been working on this “round the clock” for 3 years!), then I start coming up with ideas/sketches, getting into the groove. Then I'll send some stuff back to PT and Marcin a few days later for feedback before I go and produce the track up properly.