The Chronicles Of Spellborn Scores Composer

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The producers of upcoming U-Engine MMORPG The Chronicles of Spellborn have hired composer Jesper Kyd to handle the score for the game. Kyd has won awards for his work in Freedom Fighters and Hitman: Contracts. The full press release contains all of the details.
"We knew a mix of diverse musical textures would better serve our game than simply using an orchestra, so we approached Jesper Kyd who is renowned for his versatility as well as producing scores that go beyond the traditional mould,” explains Matthew Florianz, Sound Designer for The Chronicles of Spellborn." Jesper has fashioned the kind of grandeur usually associated with the cinematic sound of an orchestra, though he only used analogue sounds and solo instruments, and delivers a deeply emotional impact with a minimum of bombast. His elaborate, cerebral and intuitive treatment was exactly what we were looking for."

 

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Press Release:

The Chronicles Of Spellborn Features Original Score By Leading Video Game Composer Jesper Kyd

New Breed of Fantasy Music Immerses Players in Unique

The Hague, The Netherlands – April 6th, 2006 – Spellborn International NV. announces that Jesper Kyd, the internationally acclaimed composer whose video game credits include Freedom Fighters and the Hitman series, has created the original music score for the massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), The Chronicles of Spellborn. Kyd’s score for Spellborn is an inspired blend of organic and ethereal musical landscapes embroidered with theatrical orchestrations that provide an emotional connection for the player and fully immerses them in the post-apocalyptic dark fantasy world of Spellborn.

Since the art and environments designed for The Chronicles of Spellborn have been developed with such involving attention to detail, the producers of Spellborn did not want a generic fantasy score and felt a purely orchestral pallet would not reflect the true nature of Spellborn. Their vision demanded they seek out a more unique, multi-layered, vanguard style.

"We knew a mix of diverse musical textures would better serve our game than simply using an orchestra, so we approached Jesper Kyd who is renowned for his versatility as well as producing scores that go beyond the traditional mould,” explains Matthew Florianz, Sound Designer for The Chronicles of Spellborn." Jesper has fashioned the kind of grandeur usually associated with the cinematic sound of an orchestra, though he only used analogue sounds and solo instruments, and delivers a deeply emotional impact with a minimum of bombast. His elaborate, cerebral and intuitive treatment was exactly what we were looking for."

Barry Hoffman, Spellborn International NV.’s Marketing Manager added, "Jesper Kyd is a composer with the rare combination of having a recognizable personal style, a good feel for what speaks to a mass audience and the ability to translate mood and emotion into music. Just as he has done in the action and stealth genres before, Jesper Kyd brings extraordinary creativity that will not only captivate Spellborn players but will also appeal to a broader spectrum of music lovers and soundtrack fans."

Music samples from The Chronicles of Spellborn are available at www.tcos.com.

About Jesper Kyd
Jesper Kyd’s dedication to create scores that transcend traditional repertoires has gained him international critical acclaim and numerous accolades from the arts and entertainment industry. Kyd’s hybrid electronic and live choral score for Freedom Fighters earned him the GameSpot award for “Best Original Music in a Game” and nomination for “Best Use of Sound in a Game” at the Billboard Digital Entertainment Awards. His fusion of minimalist electronica and dark orchestral and choral grooves featured in Hitman: Contracts was awarded best “Original Music” by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts at the 2005 BAFTA Games Awards. Hitman: Contracts also won the 2005 Game Audio Network Guild award for “Best Cinematic Audio.” www.jesperkyd.com

About Spellborn International NV.
Since the founding of the company in 2004, Spellborn International Ltd. has focused on the single goal of developing an innovative Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG). Privately owned and operated, Spellborn N.V's development studios are based in The Hague, The Netherlands. The multinational development team is made up of experienced professionals from the game development industry as well as specialists in the many other disciplines required to release a game of this scope. The team is bound by a collective desire to break conventions on the way to developing a revolutionary title. www.tcos.com

 

[Daedalus]

It's too bad they couldn't get Jeremy Soule. I love the stuff he's done for Morrowind and Oblivion.

 

[BlackDragon323]

Jeremy Soule is da BOMB!
Personally I think he's the best fu**cnkg game composer out there.
His work on Oblivion is by far his best right now.
Everything he does is amazing and totally fits the game.

Jesper Kyd is good too, but Jeremey is an awesome composer.

 

[Cursed_Soul]

Ill be sure to say hi to him when i get to work
always cool to see a new face

 

[Gnome]

It's too bad they couldn't get Jeremy Soule. I love the stuff he's done for Morrowind and Oblivion.

Soule's also doing Supreme Commander, and after TA's awesome orchestral soundtrack it's quite reassuring to have him working again. Orchestral just works so much better for grand war games than electronic/synthed junk so common in RTS games (and obviously in fantasy games too, but there's really no contest anyway).

 

[zynthetic]

I've been a fan of JKP since I got MDK2. He'll do anything but disappoint.

 

[Daedalus]

Soule's also doing Supreme Commander, and after TA's awesome orchestral soundtrack it's quite reassuring to have him working again. Orchestral just works so much better for grand war games than electronic/synthed junk so common in RTS games (and obviously in fantasy games too, but there's really no contest anyway).

Oh wow, I loved TA's soundtrack and had no idea that was Jeremy Soule. The man is amazing and definitely one of the best composers around.

I'm really looking forward to Supreme Commander. Chris Taylor is another genius

 

[hal]

I'm really looking forward to Supreme Commander.

:tup: :tup:

 

[NozzeM]

Hey guys, you might wanna check out some of the modifications we made to the unreal engine 2.5. It's mentioned in the latest newsletters, here's a bit:

Unreal Engine 2.5 enhancements
Although The Chronicles of Spellborn uses the Unreal Engine 2.5, a lot of changes were made to the engine to enhance TCoS’ graphics even further. Graphic programmer Sven Van Soom sheds some lights on some of the more important changes.

One of the biggest changes we implemented is consistent lightning. A lot of work went into creating similar lighting calculations on different kinds of geometry. Terrain, environment models and characters are all lit in exactly the same way, in order to fit together perfectly. Part of this work was extending the Unreal 2.5 engine to support light maps on terrain and environment models (called static meshes in Unreal terminology). The shadows that are rendered in these maps provide the subtle ‘visual glue’ that glues models to terrain, and gives our environmental artists an extra tool for creating unique atmospheres. Using light maps rules out dynamic shadows, so it won't be supported at release. We chose for ‘more polygons’ in favor of truly dynamic lighting for now. Our graphic developers created the entire game with this technology in mind, so we will support dynamic lighting for sure at some point.

Enhanced Day-night cycle support. Light that reaches the Shards is not coming from a sun, but from the ever changing Deadspell Storm. This gives rise to something similar to a day-night cycle. Technically, this means we had to extend the engine to support changing environment lighting conditions, and our artists have to take these changing lighting conditions into account. Parameters like light color, brightness, shadow contrast, fogging, bloom, etc. are all controlled over time, and for every shard a specific day-night cycle is designed that defines the shard's atmosphere. Internal testing has defined a current day-night cycle of 4 hours. We are sure you will be surprised by the impact of the enhanced system. Enhanced grass and growth support. We worked on speeding up and extending the engine's ground detail, grass and growth support. Translated to more interesting terms this entails that the game offers lush environments filled with flora. We are currently experimenting with an even more advanced system in which the weather has impact on the grass and growth. Imagine a gust of wind working it’s way over a grass filled field or hill.

Don't expect this game to look anything like ut2004, we're really doing something great with these new features here .

 

[Arnage]

consistent lightning

I wish they had at least tried to make the different geometry types look the same in vanilla ue2.