I'm replaying Fallen Order and able to pay a little bit more attention this time (the first time around, I was mostly just dazzled). Cal has just landed on Kashyyyk having taken down an AT-AT to help partisans fighting the Empire. Saw Gerrera thanks him for the help, but when he hears Cal's here on Jedi business, he's skeptical and scoffs that the Jedi are dead.
It gets interesting here. Cal holds out his lightsaber, a challenge to Saw's offhand comment. And Saw needles him. Asks him if he got the lightsaber off a corpse. Cal fixes Saw with one of those thousand yard stares the boy is too good at and tells him quietly that his master gave it to him.
Saw is a master at what he does. He's charismatic, he gets people to lay down their lives for him and his causes. He knows how to handle them. He sees this fresh-faced kid in front of him with a lightsaber, who immediately starts asking about how to help the Wookiees, and Saw realizes he's got his angle.
(I think Cere clocked that he was sizing Cal up right away, and was concerned well before Saw left the planet.)
So when Cal meets up with Saw in the forest trench to find out the plan, Saw knows just how to play him. He gives Cal the mission of entering the Imperial base and freeing the Wookiees. Is this strictly necessary for Saw's plan to work? Probably not, but it'll be a useful distraction, and more importantly, Saw knows how Jedi are drawn to helping innocents like moths to a flame. If the kid becomes loyal to him for this mission, he'll be a useful tool in the future; if he fails, the main plan isn't jeopardized and he's still a good distraction.
So he lays a hand on Cal's shoulder and tells Cal to free the prisoners. With his lightsaber. The same weapon he just called Cal a graverobber about. Someone older and wiser might have seen a red flag there! But Cal Kestis?
Cal is ecstatic to be needed. To be helpful. He's so proud already he has to brag to BD about it immediately.
Cal instantly looks up to Saw. I think he recognized Saw's leadership skills, his charisma, and his battle prowess, and was taken right back to Master Tapal; but he's not old enough or experienced enough to see the way Saw is looking at him and figuratively licking his chops. All Cal sees is someone who's fighting against the Empire, making a difference, and thinks that he could make a difference again, too.
Cal is the classic smart kid who achieved too quickly, never learned how to fail, wound up spending a lot of time with adults who praised his skills -- and he hungers for that praise still. You can see how he lights up in general when he realizes he's done something really skillful -- taking out that AT-ST walker puts an actual grin on his face, the same grin he probably got as a Padawan when he knew he'd executed something tricky. He loves to be told he's done well, especially after five years in the Bracca scrapyards where standing out could mean being found by the Empire.
(Look at this smug little dork, getting hydrated after destroying a scout walker. Also, two seconds later Cere asks how he's doing with the Force and Cal cheerfully says well, he's not dead yet! and he'd rather not talk about it! But that's a whole rant for another post.)
The Jedi Order specifically put Cal with Master Tapal because they realized he had a problem with not knowing how to handle failure, but because their training was cut short, Cal never did learn the lesson. He blames himself completely when something goes wrong (Cere reminds him that saving the Wookiees and the Partisans is out of his control, a warning he shrugs off instantly even before they get to the fight); he can get a success, but he craves more. He's always looking for that person who can tell him that he's done right, who can give that external validation to help him feel useful. He sees instantly that Saw -- clever, resourceful, respected -- could be a person like that, and Cal just glows around him despite having known him for all of five minutes.
Cal doesn't realize he was being handled, and very skillfully so.
He still doesn't realize that going into Survivor, is still working for Saw, but there's a reason Cere isn't on these missions with him; not only does she have her own goals, but she doesn't trust Saw or his methods. I'm sure she sees that need Cal has to feel needed, to feel useful, and frets about it privately; there are some things that are just too entrenched to root up entirely. Once Cal starts growing comfortable with his powers again, the urge to help, to succeed, to do right by those he looks up to is very, very strong.
It’s both insanely satisfying and deeply horrifying to play with Cal’s Dark Side power 😭😭😭
And somehow the most painful thing was I yelled at BD for a stim on Nova Garon just after giving in to the Dark Side, and Cal’s voice was a demand, it was cold and absolutely devoid of fondness and my heart just broke
(I don’t know if that was intentional or I just happened to make that up but that’s what I heard dammit and it was deliciously painful)
I've been meaning to dive into how much I love Cal and Cere's tension, and their relationship, in Fallen Order. It's so well-written and well-acted, and I love how much both of them grow throughout their time together. Buckle in, folks, this is a long one!
Here, Cal's just been rescued by the Mantis crew after being kidnapped to fight the Haxion Brood. This is something he has every right to be furious at Greez about. Greez's gambling debts led the Brood to put out bounties on him, and when they couldn't get him, they snagged a kid who just happened to fall into Greez's orbit. Cal and BD-1 were both at risk of losing their lives for Greez's mistakes. While Greez is appropriately apologetic, Cal barely even pays attention. He stares at Cere, his shoulders slumped, expression barely hiding his hurt.
He's still reeling from what he learned on Zeffo the day before. From who he learned it from.
The Second Sister cornered and nearly killed him, goading him about being a weak Padawan, about Jaro Tapal. But she also revealed that she was Cere's former Padawan, that Cere had lied to Cal, and that Cere was responsible for what had happened to Trilla.
This devastates Cal.
He holds it together as much as he can. While still on Zeffo, he allows himself a moment of real vulnerability, asking quietly, "Cere, why didn't you tell me?" But by the time he's rescued from the Brood, that vulnerability shifts into disappointment and a desperate hope that somehow Trilla was lying to him.
I love what they do with him here. He's sarcastic. Angry. "I had a nice chat with the Second Sister." He waits a second to drop the bomb. "Trilla." This is Cal Kestis at his most teenaged, snarky and hurt and venomous. He still keeps it reeled in -- he did grow up a Jedi, after all, he's not gonna cuss her out or anything absurd like that -- but he's so human here, and so young.
There's that desperate hope. He asks Cere if it's true, if she really betrayed Trilla to the Empire.
But Cere, for her part, can't go there yet. How she can explain to this traumatized Padawan whose connection to the Force is still so fragile, that not all masters sacrificed themselves for their Padawans? How can she admit it to herself? She tries to deflect and to tell Cal that Trilla would do anything to compromise their mission, because she can't yet say "Yes. I tried to protect her, and I failed, and she paid the price." Because who can just say that? Who can take a look at the lowest they have ever been and stare at it with the cold light of honesty and say yes, the bad things you've heard about me are absolutely true? And imagine trying to do that when you're also trying to make amends, to move forward, to protect other children -- and you know that that protection starts right here, right now, with this one boy, and you've got to do anything you can to earn his trust?
So she deflects, and avoids saying anything of substance, and Cal's having none of it.
Check the subtitle here. We got the ?! in the house!!! Cal has to know, how can she not know how important this is? Because now that he's off Bracca, the safety valve's gone. He's got to do something of meaning now, got to help people the way he should have been doing all along. His own survival? Fine. Who needs it now. If he can just do something meaningful, if he can just keep someone else from having to go through what he did, then by the Force he's going to do it. Once in motion a Cal Kestis in motion must stay in motion, for the alternative is terrifying.
"Is it true?!" and he doesn't know what to think about the former Jedi before him, if he can trust anything she'd told him so far, if she'll protect him if the time comes, if she'll give in to the Empire again. He's pissed off and wounded and scared. Cere and Trilla's relationship has nothing to do with him and everything to do with him.
And Cere just acquiesces that Trilla was her apprentice, and Cal snaps, "You should have told me."
They don't get any more time to deal with it, because Kashyyyk needs them.
If you keep having Cal and Cere interact after this point, Cal is noticeably brittle. Cere tries to apologize, but Cal has thrown up his walls, deciding that fine, this is how it is now, and the trust they were starting to share is over. He doesn't want to talk about it when Cere tries to bring it up... but he lets Greez see how hurt he still is. That's safer than trying to talk to Cere about it directly.
Compare Cal asking why she couldn't tell him, and sharing how he feels like she broke their sense of being a team...
... To Cal's response after Cere admits she should have told him the truth from the beginning. That's what he said earlier that he wanted, but here, he's having none of it. It's too hard to get into with her. He's too afraid of what he'll find if they're really honest at this point, so he tries to shift the focus back to the mission. Things are broken between him and Cere, fine, but they can still do their work. He clings to that. As hurt as Cal is, he knows what they're doing still makes sense, and he still wants to fight against the Empire. If he has to do that with someone he can't trust, well, so be it.
And Cere understands. Despite her fear of going into the truth, she knows she's the one with greater wisdom and experience here. She doesn't tell him he's being a petulant child about something that has nothing to do with him, or tell him he needs to get over it. If she can't be fully honest with him, not yet, she does an admirable job of being otherwise open and accepting of his feelings. She knows he'll either come around, or he won't, and all she can do is offer the space for him to do so.
By the end of the second Kashyyyk mission, Cere's hoping that enough time has passed that maybe Cal's ready to hear more. Perhaps she's also guilty that Trilla went after him again, and that the Ninth Sister also put Cal's life in danger. Whatever the reason, she tries to reach out to him again. She gives more explanation that she has so far, and you can see just how difficult this is for her. All three characters are acted so well here -- Greez awkwardly in the middle putting way too much salt on his food, Cere's halting explanation, and Cal's completely closed off body language. H
ell, we practically even get an eye roll from him. Yeah. This dude's still a teenager.
...but one who's acting this way out of hurt, and out of not knowing/being afraid to know the whole story. Once you know everything that happened to Cere and Trilla, it's not wrong to want to shake Cal and tell him to be more understanding! They were in an impossible situation! There was no way to win and they both lost!
But he doesn't know that, and at this point, it's easier -- less painful for him -- not to know. So he tells Cere it's okay, but the message is, I don't want to hear it. He's been thinking about it all along when he goes off on his missions, and he's come to the conclusion that yeah, Cere probably did the best she could, there's no point dwelling on it, and that's good enough to go on with the mission. It's fine. (He's fine.)
And then we get... Dathomir and Kujet's Tomb, and all of Cal's efforts to move forward in the Force, to be strong when Cere let him down, to focus on the mission, it all goes to hell.
Suddenly Cal's the one overwhelmed by regret and self-blame. He's forced to examine his own darkest day, and when confronted with it, he falls apart. He's heartbroken all over again and convinced that what happened to Master Tapal was entirely his own fault, even though Cere tries to absolve him by telling him the truth, that he was just a child. Cal can't hear a thing she's saying.
Both actors here are so, so good. Cal is scared and small and a hurt, grieving child so desperate to find a sense of control about what happened that he blamed himself. His voice breaks, he hunkers down into himself, he holds his ruined lightsaber as tight as he can. And Cere finally lets the poison spill out, the self-hatred she's been carrying so long, she gets down on his level and manages to say everything she's been holding in. It comes out in a frantic, breathless rush, and honestly, both of them bring tears to my eyes in this scene.
So she's finally open. Finally lays it all out. What happened to her, how she used the dark side, how she failed both Trilla and herself.
More importantly, both for herself and for Cal, she reveals how she kept going. How she found a new hope. How she decided that this was not the end of her story.
Now we see what Cere was like as a Jedi truly. She's compassionate, but commanding. She instructs Cal to get up. Tells him he's going to make a new lightsaber. That it isn't over. That he can move on. He just has to take the first step.
And Cal wipes the tears from his eyes, and nods, and he believes her.
The lesson stays with him. He always was a fast learner. He goes to Ilum and rebuilds his lightsaber, goes to Dathomir and confronts his past again and this time succeeds. He learns that failure is not the end, but a part of the path. He starts to thaw towards Cere, grateful that she didn't turn away from him when he fell to his lowest and confessed what had happened to Master Tapal.
Then Trilla confronts him on Bogano, and he sees what happened first hand.
The entire sequence is gutting. Trilla's fear and agony are palpable, and Cere's devastation -- both emotional and dark side -- are so painful to see. Cal's utterly overwhelmed by it, sent into a partial seizure from the intensity of the flashback. (That dazed expression afterward sure looked post-ictal to me.) And when he gets back to the Mantis, bereft a Holocron, instead of telling Cere the next thing they need to do for the mission....
Cal Kestis halts everything because he has to apologize.
He wastes no time. He tells Cere immediately he saw what they went through. He says "I'm so sorry." And he takes responsibility for his own behavior, that arrogance that he clung to that told him he would never fail someone that way.
The thing is, Cere was comfortable never hearing this apology from him. She had started making peace with it, ever since Dathomir, with what she had done. She never expected him to empathize like this, but hearing it must have been such a powerful, emotional feeling. It's only after Cal apologizes and makes things right between them that he goes forward to discuss what happened to the Holocron and what they need to do next.
When it's Cere who takes the news hard, who blames herself... look who's there, reflecting his master's teachings right back at her. He tells her that mistakes are in the past, that they're in this together, that she won't be going after the Holocron alone; he even reaches out and puts a hand on her shoulder, starting to grow from a mentee to an equal, to someone who can support her as she's been supporting him.
Seeing how Cal lifts Cere up during her darkest time, both here on the Mantis and later in Nur, as a reflection of what she did for him after Dathomir... I could scream about it, okay??? In fact I have been screaming about it! Right here! In this post! For several thousand words!!! Just seeing these two respect each other! Care for each other! Lift each other up!!! I can't even with it! They have both grown SO MUCH!
SHE'S SO PROUD OF HIM JUST LOOK
and then she KNIGHTS HIM and my heart just bursts with pride at how far they've both come, Cere finally embracing the Force again, Cal kneeling to accept a Knighthood he thought he would never, ever see....
you can't tell me he wasn't tearing up here. I saw how bright they made his eyes look in this split second. YOU CAN'T FOOL ME. Damn, I wish I could gif the little looks on his face right at this moment, because you can see so many emotions wash over him. Cameron Monaghan over here just exploding my heart. This kid!!!
...
anyway, I think that's all I've got. Just... CAL AND CERE! They mean a lot to me, okay???
I started replaying Jedi: Fallen Order last night, and it's been like an hour and my heart is breaking all over again. Look at this kid. Cal Kestis is barely 18 here, and he's just a baby covered in grease and oil leaping around incredibly dangerous wreckage in a job that's more like indentured servitude than a career. Passing through the scrapyard you overhear workers coughing (and not wanting to get it checked out) or complaining about company scrip. Prauf calls it out in a heartbreaking speech that engineers became scrappers, that their pay got cut, that things got more dangerous when the Empire took over. Cal's working in a death trap with nowhere to go. No wonder Prauf tried to tell him he should get out of here. How could you look at that face and not want to protect him?
Here's Cal in his Luke Skywalker era. Except where Luke wanted off a planet where he lived in the sticks (in the dunes) and nothing ever happened, Cal looks out over a planet where everything is scrap and trash and wreckage, and the Empire's boot smothers everything, and he has no dreams except old nightmares.
(Also, look at this gorgeous photo. This game is just stunning. It's incredible how they recreated the look of all of the beautiful matte paintings from the time of the original trilogy.)
Aaaaand here we go, the game gives you about 5 minutes before you dive headfirst in Cal Kestis' trauma, even if you don't know what exactly it is. The look in his eyes here is heartbreaking. Prauf was so strong to look into that thousand yard stare on this kid's face on the daily and not just lose it, honestly. Prauf, you the real MVP.
The panic when Cal uses the Force to save his friend -- and in his surprise, Prauf calls it like it is, says Force and Jedi -- is devastating. Cal's frantic, taking his friend's face in his hands, begging him to please forget it, please forget it, please stop talking about it, please don't think about it, the way Cal tries not to think about it every single day --
He's so, so scared.
I wonder if Cal's fractured relationship with the Force was a desperate act of self-preservation. While Cere cut herself off from the Force knowingly, what if Cal subconsciously did so as a way to protect himself? He must have crash-landed absolutely overloaded with terror, grief, anguish, even hatred for the clones who had turned on them. But if his connection to the Force splintered, if it shattered -- then those emotions couldn't lead him down a dark path. What if Cal accidentally insulated himself from the dark side? Because this is a face that is so frightened, and the dark could offer a solution for that, power that could save and protect him from such emotions.
Last night I went to the Grammy Museum for an event celebrating the Jedi: Survivor score! Sometimes living in Los Angeles has its benefits. It was an evening with composers Stephen Barton and Gordy Haab, as well as their recording engineer Alan Meyerson, moderated by Jon Burlingame. I took copious notes throughout so I could share them with you all :) All quotes are paraphrases, I’m not that quick a note taker.
My husband and I settled into our seats, me vibrating with excitement as the lights dimmd. I was already hyped to hear the composers talk about my favorite game and their process for scoring it, but then my jaw fell out of my head because who strolled up on stage but fucking Cal Kestis himself, Cameron Monaghan, unexpected and uncredited on the event description.
I almost rolled out of my chair. Then I frantically started smacking my husband (who’s never played the game, but loves music and production) and hissing “it’s him it’s him it’s the Jedi!!!”
Cameron’s intro was brief but lovely. He introduced himself, then paused and said something like, “Do you hear that? That’s the sound of silence. That is awful. I can hear my own thoughts! No one wants to play a game like that. Which is why we have these guys!” He introduced the composers, Stephen and Gordy, as well as the sound engineer Alan and the moderator for the event, shook their hands and exchanged some hugs, then sat down in the audience. Giddily I returned to my notes as Jon led the discussion.
Q: How did you get into scoring video games?
Stephen was a gamer and had always been interested in working with video games. They were “enticing” and the schedule was much more appealing than for TV, where you might be handed a script and told to get the music back in a few days.
Gordy hadn’t worked particularly in games before.
Alan has been mixing and engineering video game soundtracks for the past 25 years, like Gears of War.
Q: What’s the difference between scoring a film and scoring a video game?
For film, it’s adding music onto what already exists; often the composer isn’t involved until the last 6 weeks or so of production. (Fun fact I learned earlier this year, Ludwig Goransson was involved from the start on Oppenheimer because Christopher Nolan specifically wanted to subvert that.)
The film is fairly static by the time the composers get their hands on it, so things are unlikely to change.
Video games are more like trying to put clothes on someone running a race, because drastic changes can happen at any time. The timeline is also greatly extended — 2-3 years is common — so things may evolve and shift drastically in that time.
Film is also much less volume of music… they wrote an entire 8 hours!
Q: Is there a Star Wars music “house” style?
Initially Star Wars projects outside of the original trilogy were often scored as if they were B sides to the original soundtrack. But the aesthetic is evolving. There are a few standards though — there must always be that symphonic scale.
The score was performed at Abbey Road. Alan mentioned that he was actually there on 9/11 working on a movie about a terrorist attack. Stephen loves recording at Abbey Road so much he and his wife named his daughter Abbey. All three of them agreed that Abbey Road is magical and the orchestra practically blends itself; for choral performances, all you have to do is stick a couple microphones in there and they sound fantastic.
They played a clip of “Dark Times,” with gameplay footage intercut with the symphony performing at Abbey Road. They explained that they wanted to develop a new theme for the Empire. At this time, the Empire just is. You can’t use the Imperial March, because the Imperial March is how the Empire perceives itself. But how does Cal see the Empire? It’s dark and ominous. It’s everywhere. It’s a fact of life.
Gordy explained that they literally shaped the melody like the sinus rhythm of a heartbeat to indicate that Cal’s on the run, his heart always pounding, never safe. They used a full 12 tone chromatic scale to keep the track always uncomfortable and unsettled.
Stephen is such a Merrical shipper! He talked about how one of the central conflicts of Survivor is Cal struggling with his feelings towards Merrin, and what do you do when you’ve utterly lost the fight? He pointed out what the Senator tells Cal, and calls him a pretty reasonable guy. Do you stop fighting when you’ve clearly lost? “Maybe Cal should go shack up with Merrin somewhere and have a nice life.”
Q: What is it like having so much funding for the score on a game like this?
All you can really sell now is quality, and people expect it now.
Q: What is the process like?
They are brought into the game in the script phase, where they may see some concept art and get to read the script to help determine the story beats.
The collaboration is joyful! It seems like it could be really scary, to have game play testers, the game designers, and other music folks all weighing in on how the score is working or not working, but they actually really enjoyed it. They’ll usually do about half the music, then have people test play it for a few months, come back with notes, and then work on the remainder after seeing what worked and what didn’t.
They played “Flight” in its entirety with gameplay of Cal and Merrin outrunning the Trident, and talked extensively about our girl Merrin! Stephen talked about how in JFO, Merrin was important but not as big of a player. Now in Jedi: Survivor, Merrin is vital,and we can see her story arc take shape. Her small motif in JFO was expanded into an epic, heroic scale after we see her power with portals and moving on the wind. They reached for all kinds of wind instruments, from Alpine horns, Tibetan horns, and even the “most tasteful vuvuzela ever.”
Note: it’s almost as heart-pounding to watch that sequence on the big screen as it is to play it!
They both said that some music flows onto the page and is easy to write; the escape from Jedha sequence was not one of those! It wasn’t easy to write, mix or play! A hundred people worked on this song, and it was hard as hell. The orchestra musicians kept coming up to Alan and telling him they loved playing it because it was such a challenge.
They don’t always tell the studio who wrote what. They work well together as they both love bourbon and coffee! Stephen says he’s great at about ¾ of the tune but not the ending, whereas Gordy can fix that up in a jiffy. They also sometimes divvied things up by planet or emotional beats.
Q: I noticed in this last song (“Flight”) there was a choral element. How do you decide when to incorporate choir instead of synth choir?
Choir is often the first casualty of budget cuts since it’s so many people involved. Sometimes, synth choir is chosen for just a vibe or an extra layer.
However, there’s a rule that in musicals when the emotion is building to a point that words can no longer contain them, that’s when a character must burst into song. For a score, when the emotion is swelling and can no longer be contained by mere instruments, that is when to pull out the choir. So we see it in “Flight.”
Me: We also see it in “Rage,” muahahaha.
They used 120 singers for Flight and only needed 3 microphones because of how good Abbey Road sounds.
They prefer amateur choirs to session professionals since you can sometimes have too-professional singers trying to out-sing each other, and amateurs are usually more relaxed.
Q: There were a number of unusual or even invented instruments used for this score, tell us about them.
Gordy made bottle chimes. He accidentally dropped a bottle of water while playing tennis and a ball pinged off it, making a lovely sound. He ordered 20 metal water bottles and strung them in a wardrobe rack with different amounts of water in them. Because it took ages to make, they used it in loads of places in the score.
Stephen went nuts and ordered 200 containers of BlueTack for the pianos for Koboh. They wanted Koboh to sound like the old West, but not that spaghetti Western honkytonk piano sound. If you make BlueTack into a sausage shape and roll it around a piano string you can make it make these strange broken sounds sort of like a gamelan. This is called a prepared piano. The low bumbumbum noises when first getting on Koboh and meeting the pit droid? Freaking piano. I would have never guessed! They did this to 3 pianos.
They played a clip of Where the Nekkos Roam. They used the prepared pianos, an orchestra, dulcimers, Basset horns, euphoniums, tubas. They wanted Koboh to feel lived in and to have history expressed in the music. The musicians were excited to have to rent out Basset horns since like nobody actually owns one.
Q: Tell us about the cantina music.
The original cantina brief from George Lucas to John Williams was apparently, “what if aliens came down in 1000 years and found sheet music from Benny Goodman, but didn’t have the same instruments?” And thus we got the Mos Eisley cantina theme which is almost unbeatable.
They were thinking of scoring the cantina music themselves, but then thought, “what if we gave that brief to a bunch of really cool bands?”
They highly recommended Dan Mayo from Tantran. They recommended taking a few hours to watch him kick ass on the drums on YouTube.
Tantran recorded "Fields of Dusk" for the cantina first, then Stig came back and said “what if we wove this into the score? What if it was Cal and Merrin’s love theme?” Then they created a symphonic version, also partially inspired by a Joni Mitchell song.
They played part of the cantina version of “Fields of Dusk,” then they played the symphonic version with Cal and Merrin riding the spamel to Cere’s base. They gushed about being able to work with the story and the subtext.
Alan said that "Fields of Dusk” “is visceral. It vibrates shit inside of you. Mixing it was a highly emotional experience for me. Even now sitting under the subwoofer — it’s right here, over my head — it’s very emotional.”
Q: How many motifs do you have?
“Seven thousand.” - Stephen
Gordy later amended that to about two dozen, but with tons of variations.
Q: What are the interactions like with the game developers?
They get to be in the building with them, working on the narrative team — making sure to serve the story first. It also lets them practice gameplay or watch others playing to see how it flows.
Again, it’s a 2-3 year process.
They played the clip of Cal and Merrin making a campfire in the cave on Jedha. Stephen is all about the Merrical ship (not that he used those words, alas, but still)! He said this was such gorgeous writing, really allowing the technology to showcase the acting, and it’s his all time favorite scene in the game.
The whole theater clapped as he said that. Yes! A whole theater clapping while someone was talking about Merrical and calling it gorgeous. *sobbing forever*
Q: What has it been like to meet fans?
They’ve been delighted by the fans and how much they love the characters and the amazing performances of all the actors in the game.
Q: Are there plans for a sequel?
Stephen: “Are there Lucasfilm snipers out there? Look for the red dot…”
Gordy: “There’s not NOT plans.”
Fan questions!
Alan mentioned he loves doing the hardest piece first! Then it’s all skiing downhill.
A fan asked about more weird created instruments.
They also used a bunch of bamboo smacking other pieces of bamboo, as well as using little drums from other purposes or sets.
Was there anything they messed up or wanted to do differently than they did in JFO?
They accidentally didn’t loop music in the hangar on Zeffo, so if you stick around there for more than 3 minutes, it just becomes wind sound and gets very lonely. A live streamer was playing the game, talked to his audience for like 10 minutes, then wandered around almost in silence as his fans commented “why is this game so quiet?”
Gordy wanted to make JFO sound much darker and got his wish in Survivor.
I had so been hoping they would talk about “Rage” and the struggle with the dark side, but they were sort of avoiding spoilers. So when they got to the Q&A I had to speak up.
I asked, “What was it like working with darker themes later in the game, like with Rage? You see a real shift in the motifs and there’s also more amazing choral work.” Their faces seriously lit up XD
Stephen said this was one he handed to Gordy because it was very difficult.
Gordy said that this is Cal at his worst, so it had to be so over the top. Think of consonant sounds crashing through the melody, Cal trying to keep control of his thoughts but they’re twisting away, he’s trying to think straight and can’t. It’s discordant. It’s also scored to evoke a heartbeat throughout, like breathing.
It was so hard for the choir to do, going back and forth — you can’t do that with choral samples or synth!
They ended with a video they played from their Hollywood Bowl show in June, and said we were only the second group of people to see it. They played a clip where they do use the classic Imperial March, but contoured so you only get the silhouette of its shape, instead of the full sound. It ended with a clip of the Tantran band playing a wicked awesome set out in the desert. The last image they showed was a list of the 287 people who worked on the score!
We let out and I did get to meet them! Stephen was lovely and I told him it was just such a beautiful, haunting score. I actually had a sketch of the campfire scene with me and he signed it! His daughter Abbey is an artist too and she was really impressed by my sketchbook (she looked to be about 11). Gordy also got to see a bit of my sketchbook and signed Cal in Nova Garon! What an awesome night! We didn’t see Cameron again but I was so astounded to see him the first time I didn’t mind at all.
SO COOL! Sometimes, kids, living in Los Angeles isn’t so bad!!
