Taking an “Oath” of Blood – Composer Inon Zur Discusses His Work on Lineage II

by Louis Bedigian

 

“For Lineage II, this was my description: love, two and a half minutes. Lust, three minutes.” 

 

Inon Zur has moved around a lot in the past couple of years. He became known for composing the music for various Star Trek games, including New Worlds and Klingon Academy. His work on Icewind Dale II and Fallout Tactics led to further proliferation. He gained an even bigger audience with SOCOM II, and impressed millions of players with his work on Prince of Persia: Warrior Within and Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones.

 

Now he has taken on another sequel: Lineage II Chronicle 5: Oath of Blood. 

 

 

 

“Lineage II is like its own on-going game,” the composer told me, talking about how he continued to write music for it even after the game was completed. “Right after I finished the game, I did a short trailer for it. I just finished a longer trailer, about two minutes. Now I’m about to get into a little [promo] movie [for Lineage], about eight minutes in length. So it’s an on-going thing.”

 

During the year Inon worked on Pirates of the Caribbean: The Legend of Jack Sparrow, as well as Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War: Dark Crusade.

 

And he’s not stopping there. “Right now I’m involved in three new projects,” he says. “I’m very excited about them, but at this point I can’t talk about them.”

 

Fortunately he can talk about Oath of Blood. Inon tells us about the game’s musical themes, his composing process, how he writes music, and a whole lot more. 

 

 

 

It’s been a while since we’ve spoken – bring us up-to-date on what you’ve been doing.

 

Inon Zur: As far as Lineage II: Oath of Blood, it’s an extremely interesting project in that there are things derived from this project that I am working on (like trailer). Lineage II is [different] from what I’ve worked on before because it’s not about battles. It’s about exploration, or all the standard music for video games. In Lineage II, all the music is doing is describing emotion. I had, usually what I’m getting is a description of what I need. Usually it’s, “Right now you’re in a forest, and the battle will be lost. And the world looks like this and this… And the music needs to be this.” I get very long descriptions.

 

For Lineage II, this was my description: love, two and a half minutes. Lust, three minutes.

 

Wow. That’s it?

 

IZ: Sometimes they’d bring me the description [of a character]. I’m an elf woman and I’ve suffered during the war. And this is how I feel. Musically, this is how I feel. So think about it: it was quite challenging. But for me [it was] quite amazing to try to get to the soul of things musically. I had never done that before.

 

Where do you draw inspiration for that sort of thing? There aren’t necessarily sounds that would describe lust, at least not that we’re currently familiar with.

 

IZ: It’s really hard to describe exactly what I’m doing. I’m trying to feel. I believe that there are sounds connected to our emotions, for many reasons. Maybe at one time when we felt a certain way we heard a certain sound, or vice versa. Sometimes we heard a sound in music and it made us feel a certain way. What I had to do was let loose my mind and try to let the things flow from me. When you think of love, what do you hear? That’s what I wrote.

 

The other difference between Lineage II and other projects I’ve worked on is that this game is very melodically oriented. Every cue has to be written in sort of a simple song form. The melody should be very catchy, and it’s all about the melody. So not only do the style and instruments drive the feeling, but more than all, the melody needs to convey this feeling, which is even harder.

 

Another thing I did for this game that I had not done before was write actual songs (with lyrics and everything).

 

 

Talk about instrumentation!

 

 

What was that like – having to step into new boundaries and write lyrics?

 

IZ: It wasn’t a big challenge, but it was different. In fact, nobody told me to write a song. Nobody told me to write anything that was video game music, I just got a description of what they wanted. I chose to [write songs]. They trusted me to do what I wanted, and this is the outcome.

 

How do you tackle lyrics? Most artists tell me that the music comes first. What has your experience been?

 

IZ: With me it sort of happens together. It depends. Sometimes there is a word that’s evoking some sort of melody. And sometimes it’s vice versa – it’s the melody I’m getting attached to, and I start to think about the words that could fit into it. But the process goes hand-in-hand. Really I’m not thinking about how these things happen. I just let them happen, and step back and look at it. [And decide] what do I need to tweak or change?

 

Sometimes I’m sitting at the keyboard and things are so clear in my mind, and I just play the song. It usually happens in my mind, and the process is about transferring it to keyboard.

 

Are your pieces for Lineage II being used during gameplay, story sequences, or…?

 

IZ: The pieces are incorporated into the game. Sometimes it’ll happen during an event, other times it’ll accompany a level. It’ll take on the theme of the level, and repeat itself.

 

Did the developers request that some pieces had to be loops?

 

IZ: No. I was not required at all to make sure things would loop correctly. There were a lot of options [for the developers] to choose from. The music is not repetitive.

 

You’ve talked about having a lot of freedom with this soundtrack. Were there any deadlines, and if not, how much time did you end up taking to complete your work?

 

IZ: Time is not an issue. Creative instructions are more of an issue, ‘cause I’m very fast. I could write something in a day, or in two hours. My style of composing is very intuitive, and it just happens very quickly. For me, taking the whole week to compose something is not what makes it better.

 

What was a factor was that I was free with my compositions. I was aware of the style of the game, so I couldn’t just write anything that came to mind. However, I could do my own specific style for this genre, so it became part of the franchise. 

 

 

 

How much music did you end up writing?

 

IZ: About 30 songs, [totaling] about 60 minutes of music.

 

Tell us more about Pirates of the Caribbean.

 

IZ: It was a game that I was writing more for the old movie, not for the new movie. It was a fun project to work on. I’ve always liked pirates and adventures. It was an opportunity to set myself free and have fun in the genre.

 

What about the style? Did you get to draw from the musical themes of the first film?

 

IZ: I stayed quite loyal to the genre of Hans Zimmer and his friends. But I did not use any of the material from the film.

 

Speaking of Pirates, the original flick drew its music from several different composers. Slowly games are moving in this direction. Is it for the better? Are they doing it to save time?

 

IZ: One of the reasons is to make the music more diverse. To basically get a taste of several styles that they were liking.

 

You gotta understand that when someone is getting a composer for a project, they receive many demos. Sometimes they like more than one demo and think, “This guy would be good for this part of the game. And that guy would be good for that part of the game.”

 

It really depends on the game. There are some where having only one is better for the composition.

 

Other games, ones that are changing a lot, are better off having more than one composer. Sometimes they don’t just want one genre. They want to have three different sounds within the same theme. They might want to have the same track done in three different ways – each composer [applies his own personal touch]. Which I think is really cool.

 

Nobody’s doing it, at least I want to believe no one is doing it, to save money or to save time. Unless one composer can’t write a lot of music in a very short period of time. Which also happens from time to time. But most of the time the reason is diversity. 

 

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Legend of Jack Sparrow 

 

The three new games you’re working on – I know you can’t reveal their identity, but can you tell us if they’re for the next-gen platforms?

 

IZ: Yes, all three.

 

A lot of composers started their careers at E3. How do you feel about its recent changes?

 

IZ: I’ve been visiting E3 for quite a few years now, and I really felt it took a wrong turn. It’s like the machine that defeated its purpose – it conquered and won over man. Only a few people were allowed to get into the meeting rooms where actual business was being done. The rest of the people were left to wander huge halls. I’d go there and after one hour before overwhelmed and run away [laughs].

 

I think the game is about the player. We need to find a way to him personally, because we know how avid he is for the game. The way it needs to be done is the way they’re planning next year, really concentrating on one person at a time.

 

Thank you for your time.

 

Full Credit Listing: http://www.inonzur.com/credits.html