(It makes sense, when you consider that the vast majority of the Mount Olympus deities laid dead at his feet at the end of God of War III.) McCreary didn't want to take any shortcuts, so he spent months researching and listening to the folk music of Viking antiquity. Kratos has ventured to the Nordic lands, to throw hands with the icons of Norse mythology. One of the tent-pole draws of the new God of War game is the change of setting. You can also always count on Bear McCreary to do his homework. To be honest with you, when Cory Barlog told me that this game would be shot that way, I was like, 'Yeah, no way.' I was thrilled that it was actually implemented." "I had to be mindful about how the camera would settle back on Kratos. "You need the emotional closure that the story desires, but it doesn't cut!" says McCreary. It's an audacious premise, and one that offered a slew of unique challenges to the orchestra. You can chalk that up to the groundbreaking way God of War presents its story - in a single, over-the-shoulder camera shot behind Kratos' back - like Birdman with brutal axe kills.
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If you love the work Gerald Marino did on the PS2 games, don't worry, McCreary promises there are still moments where he gets the lead out, but generally this score is more grown-up, with a more holistic point of view.
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Instead, McCreary focused on writing a huge, insanely varied score, full of peaks and valleys, tiny incantations and gigantic set pieces. You just reach this peak and you've adjusted." "It's cool, it's loud, but it's kind of like when you go to a heavy-metal concert and your ears are ringing, but after five minutes, it doesn't feel loud anymore. "I love the old God of War games, but I would not describe them as emotionally dynamic," laughs McCreary. While McCreary was a fan of the series, he understood how that could be a little limiting. Kratos tore through the flesh of the Greek pantheon, while a choir of Latin valkyries chanted bloody murder over white-hot strings and chest-shattering drums - perfect for a video game that is, in both theme and aesthetics, predominantly about violence. In its heyday, God of War consistently produced some of the most memorable music in all of games, but even then, it tended to be a little one-note. Everyone liked it, but we were like, 'Now we found the edge, let's take it back to the middle and put some orchestra back in.'" The first sketches I came up with were very small - a couple strings, a couple solos - it had a very sad theme. It was an experiment, and at first we went too far. "We wanted to craft something new that pushed the boundaries as far from the old games as possible. "In many ways, not only did I set aside my memories of the old God of War games, I treated it like it was a whole new thing," he says. No, this was different, and McCreary approached it as such. This was not the Ares-murdering Ghost of Sparta we were used to there would be no Blades of Chaos whipping around his head like a tilt-a-whirl, or an indulgent sex mini-game shoved in the middle of the narrative. When we first caught a glimpse of the reborn Kratos at E3 2016, he was envisioned as a surly, melancholy father in the mystical northern wilds with a teenaged son at his side. Sony's Santa Monica Studios has been working on the franchise reboot since at least 2014, in which time the cultural definition around video games - especially blockbuster, triple-A video games - completely shifted. Over the past 20 years he's worked on music for everything from The Walking Dead to the Metalocalypse rock opera Doomstar Requiem, but the new God of War game would be a daunting challenge no matter what's on your resume. Score composer Bear McCreary is well-known within the industry for his adaptability.