Hellgate: London Music Interview

RPG Vault was able to fire off a set of questions to the two Hellgate: London soundtrack composers, Cris Velasco and Sascha Dikiciyan.

Jonric: What do you regard as your strengths as composers, and how did they end up fitting Flagship’s goals for the game’s music element?

Sascha Dikiciyan: Well, coming from an industrial / sound design background, and with Cris’ orchestra background, I know this game was just a perfect match for us. I really saw the opportunity to create something non-typical for Hellgate. Flagship gave us all the freedom we needed. When we first started, there were a lot of times when I thought “God, this is nuts. They will never like this.” Sure enough, they loved it. I think they really wanted a particular sound and not just some cliched material.

Cris Velasco: Sascha and I are known for our hybrid scores, and Hellgate was clearly a hybrid of its own. A new kind of sound was definitely needed for this project. The guys at Flagship wanted a very non-typical score, a total blending of styles that would give the game its own unique sound.

We were given a rather large list of tracks to listen to early on that the audio team felt might work in the game. Sascha and I spent a long time going over each one, figuring out what it was about them that worked musically in the game, and how could we incorporate all this into our own unique style. It was a rather intensive process, but in the end, we definitely feel as though we’ve captured that “Hellgate sound”.