be influenced by its locale? What is
the emotion that people should feel
when they hear it? Then I can start
to narrow things down to a specific
sound, instrument or melody. Once
I come up with the musical identity
of the piece I build around that, us-
ing it as the starting point, or plant-
ing seeds that develop into it.”
“I started with the main theme
or ‘login music’, which is the play-
er’s gateway into the game and
the first piece of music they’ll hear
when they play,” remarks Acree
when discussing the five-minute
orchestral overture called The Cho-
sen. “My music supervisor Fei Yu
was a great resource for traditional
Chinese instruments, but I also did
a lot of online research as well. We
used the erhu, guzheng, pipa, solo
cello, solo vocals, taiko, Chinese op-
era bells, shamisen, and a variety of
winds including xiao, dizi, shakuha-
chi, and duduk.”
Acree recruited the orchestral
services of the Northwest Sinfonia
for the project. “Once I assembled a
team of soloists to perform on the
score, I was able to work with them
to push the melodies I had writ-
ten further into the realm of tradi-
tional writing,” Acree explains. “The
sound of Revelation wasn’t just in
the instrumentation, though. Asian
melodies are often longer and more
poetic than their western counter-
parts. I spent a lot of time trying to
unlearn my melodic tendencies so
I could approach the themes from
a new perspective. The harmonic
language is different as well. I im-
mersed myself as much as possible
in the music to try to bring an au-
thentic sound to the game.”
“For the game cinematics I do
often have a temp score, as sound is
an important part of the animation
process from the beginning,” notes
Acree. “Some games I’ve done re-
cently have had both a temp score
and a fairly specific list of require-
ments for the music.” Acree notes
that a different approach applied
when he worked on games for Bliz-
zard: “With the Blizzard in-game
music I’ve done, there has never
been a temp score or any overly spe-
cific guidelines for music, just art-
Countless character creation options are available for players
The game features a vibrant world of ancient mystery
The game features many story-driven, action-packed quests
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