Watchmen’s Tyler Bates to Compose Score For Army of Two: The 40th Day (EXCLUSIVE Interview!)

Film composer Tyler Bates has just been announced as the composer for EA’s Army of Two: The 40th Day! The composer of such films as 300 and Watchmen is no stranger to video games, but this is certainly the most well-known of the non-licensed games he’s scored.

Lucky for us, Tyler Bates reached out to us and offered an exclusive interview and we jumped at the chance to talk to him about this highly-anticipated title!

Click the jump to read the interview!

OSV: Thank you so much for giving us this opportunity to discuss Army of Two: The 40th Day. Much of your work is obviously quite different from the music experienced in the first installment of this series. What can gamers and game music fans expect from you and the soundtrack this time around? For instance, will you be carrying any of the themes over from the first?

Bates: When I came aboard, the development team and I agreed that it would be best that I write the score I think best suits the game without concern for thematic material that was developed for the first installment of the game. The music to the new game covers a broad spectrum of emotions and levels of intensity. It’s epic in size much of the time, occasionally featuring electric guitars and Guitarviol. Heavy percussion is a given. I think the cold palate of the electronic element of the score is pretty creepy. It’s sounds very post-apocalyptic to me.

OSV: How difficult or easy is it for you to go from composing soundtracks to such epics as 300 and Watchmen to a video game like Army of Two: The 40th Day? How much of this depends on the size and scope of the projects?

Bates: I find every project to be very challenging. My goal with everything I do is to create a musical identity for the property itself. With films, it is my goal to not only score the film, but to create a signature sound for each of my director’s I think this approach is what helped me dial in the musical objective for “AO2 40th Day.” The development team and I not only want the score to work well for the game, but to also be uniquely identifiable in sound and style. One of the greater challenges in scoring the game was to compose the music so that it would best fit the objectives of how Lewis James intended to format it into game play. Fortunately, he is an accomplished musician and producer, so taking that into consideration, I composed the music so there were several textural layers playing together at all times. I won’t divulge the entirety of my process, but in simple terms, I delivered the music so that every possible game play scenario would trigger a thematic or dynamic change in the music without necessarily introducing an entirely new composition. This enabled us to maintain continuity throughout as well as specifically underscoring every aspect of the game practically in real time by nature of addition or subtraction of music stems.

OSV: How many minutes of music are you writing for the game?

Bates: Somewhere between sixty and seventy five minutes. Though a single cue may be five minutes in length, it could cycle for an hour and continue to evolve depending on the number of tracks playing together at any one time. There is a fair amount of source music that was specifically created for the game as well.

OSV: Film music has long been appreciated and acknowledged by the mainstream as a viable and artistic endeavor. Do you feel game music gets its due credit relative to the popularity of the medium?

Bates: I am not sure. There are people who are avid fans of either or both. I think that may be up to them to decide. I do think that games offer composers greater opportunity for experimentation with musical motifs and textures that may not translate well in film.

OSV: Do you get any time away from composing music to get any game time in yourself? If so, do you have some favorite game or game soundtracks?

Bates: I don’t have time to play video games beyond playing the games I work on enough to get a feel for the game play. I generally work so much that I prefer to chill out and read a book or hang out with friends when I have down time.

The first outing of this series definitely had promise. Having Tyler Bates do the score for the sequel is a great decision to add some juice to the series. We’re looking forward to it! How about you?