Torchlight Interview

The folks at Original Sound Version caught up with video game composer Matt Uelmen for an extensive Q&A about the score he created for Runic Games’ Torchlight, as well as his previous RPG-related projects.

OSV: So, the team is busily working away on Torchlight, which is due out at the end of the month. Tell us about your approach to Torchlight. We can’t help but draw comparisons to yours and the rest of the team’s work on the Diablo series, but what have you done in the audio department differentiate Torchlight from your past work?

Uelmen: Well, most people associate me with the Diablo series, which is natural – and I’m very proud of those games – though I actually released more music just going by the clock for WoW than for the Diablo series, believe it or not. So, this work is actually very different from my last two projects, those being WoW and Lord of Destruction.

WoW was all about extremely long play sessions, and 99% of the music I wrote for it was strictly for high-level characters, so, for players who had already clocked over a thousand hours in the game, if not much more. It was also, by default, referential to the original structure which was created so successfully by Jason, Glenn, Tracy and Derek.

This game, of course, is new IP, and it is really trying to tap into a much more casual market, so the music needs to reflect that. I’m actually still hoping to do some slight tweaks to the opening title theme in the week I have left, with that in mind.

In terms of the mechanics of it, I do try to emphasize a few different musical things than I did in tracks that were for similar environments. I use classical/Spanish guitar up front in the new town theme, and have some fairly up-front, romantic melodies in there as well, two things I tended to avoid in my previous work, with the big exception of of Lord of Destruction, though that was for full orchestra whereas this is structured around live performances by myself supplemented by samples, so the effect is very different.

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OSV: Do you have a favorite piece that you’ve created for Torchlight? Why is this one your favorite?

Uelmen: Yes, I was really happy with how the theme for town worked out, just because it is always nice as a writer when things materialize as you visualize them, and because it was such a challenge to do something which filled a similar role in the game as (Tristram) while also being appreciably different and unique. Hopefully people who play the game feel like I was able to do that. I also gave myself the luxury of a little time to work on it and use a bunch of live takes, and, hopefully, the tune reflects that work in a good way.

Because it used so many live elements, it made sense to write it on paper first, and I’ve always found it satisfying to make music the old-fashioned way and put it on paper with pencil first. Hopefully I’ll have plenty of that kind of experience with our next project.