Inon Zur on Building the Acoustic World of Fallout 4

Vice recently managed to chat up veteran composer Inon Zur about the work he did on Fallout 4, the challenges involved with creating the score for such a highly anticipated video game, any influences he drew from the 1950s-era songs that the Fallout series is known for, and more. A snip:

Do you think disrupting the traditional way to play instruments creates something entirely new?

Yes, there is piano there but nobody told us that we need to play it this way. We could play it in a different way, because we’re in an alternate reality [in the game]. This is the whole thing about Fallout. Everything is an alternate reality, so you need to treat everything in an alternate way.

There are certainly similarities to Fallout 3 in terms of how the game feels and sounds. How tied in are you with branding, and connecting the two stories?

The situation is not the same, but there are a lot of connecting lines between Fallout 3 and Fallout 4. Basically, where we’re coming from and where we’re going are very different things in each game, but the reality is that we’re still struggling though the huge aftermath of a global holocaust. That’s the connection, so even though it’s a different hero, he or she is struggling with familiar problems in different ways. The music has to make some kind of connection, not only because of the brand, but also because of the situation in the game and the way it is evolving. Fallout 3’s score was colder, more mechanical, and it enhanced more of the raw sort of elements. Fallout 4 is cultivating more of a human aspect. It’s got much warmer sounds, more humane sounds, more intimate sounds. So, in some ways, it is a totally different approach.