Inside Control’s “musical puzzle” level and the rise of in-game bands

Should you’ve favored the audio work in action-adventure games like Control, Evil West, and the upcoming multiplayer extraction shooter Hyenas, then you definately’ll be a fan of the work from audio director Justin Andree. PCGamesN managed to seize Andree for a chat whereas at WASD 2023 in London, and we requested all of them about how Management’s greatest musical second got here to be, and what to anticipate from Hyenas music later this yr.

Andree was a part of the rationale Management pulled off certainly one of its greatest sequences, when the music Take Management performs within the degree Ashtray Maze. Take Management was particularly written for the sport by the fictional band The Outdated Gods of Asgard, an alias for real-world band Poets of the Fall, a Finnish Rock group that’s supplied music for Treatment video games since Max Payne 2.

“I feel we’re beginning to see extra concepts like that current themselves in video games,” Andree tells PCGamesN at WASD 2023. “So my position in that was with was ensuring the songs match whereas asking ‘does this fully break the finances if we go for this one specific monitor?’ Making an attempt to place the items of the musical puzzle collectively.”

You may see the Ashtray Maze degree in motion under, due to AKA HelloKitty on YouTube.

Andree goes on to speak about how video games like Management and Guardians of the Galaxy are utilizing in-universe bands and music to iterate on how music interacts with gameplay, and the way that may affect how builders take into consideration copyright points that will crop up additional down the road of their video games.

“The idea of getting Star-Lord as a band in Guardians of the Galaxy was genius,” Andree says. “Very often if you’re considering of licensing music to go in video games, the quick factor at the back of your thoughts is ‘we’re gonna get hit with takedowns, and what if we go on to a distinct platform that’s not prevalent,’ whereas Guardians was lined solely.

“The Outdated Gods of Asgard try this in an identical method and supply for Treatment of their universe. They’ll freely wander via all of it and tie all of it collectively however then by no means actually hit any of those roadblocks that you simply would possibly come up in opposition to by way of copyright restrictions.”

We additionally had the prospect to ask Andree about Hyenas, and whereas they didn’t say a lot in regards to the upcoming extraction shooter from the Complete Conflict and Alien Isolation developer Artistic Meeting, we did study one thing in regards to the tunes.

“The music performs a monstrously enormous half in it,” Andree tells us. “From various things that you should have in all probability briefly seen in trailers up to now, there’s some actually cool stuff.”

The Hyenas PC alpha could be signed up for, however we don’t have a launch date for the extraction shooter simply but. Within the meantime, you possibly can try our record of one of the best FPS games obtainable on PC proper now.

Interview performed by Nat Smith at WASD 2023.