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Twin Mirror, DONTNOD’s psychological thriller, released on December 1st. Have you played it yet? Find out more about the making of the music of the game with Antoine Rozan, Lead Audio Designer!
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Antoine ROZAN - Lead Audio Designer
My name is Antoine ROZAN and I had the chance to work at DONTNOD as Lead Audio Designer on Twin Mirror.
Music and sound are some of the most important elements when it comes to DONTNOD video games. Music can be one of the strongest narrative devices at our disposal as game developers, and it always plays an enormous role in establishing the unique atmosphere for our games.
I will share in this post some insights about how the music for Twin Mirror was made, or how we came to work with David WINGO, our composer on the game.
My role on the musical aspect was to identify the moments when the music was needed and modify what I received from David, working with him to translate his music in an interactive way so that it fits perfectly into the game sequences and maps.
Music in video games is a highly collaborative effort and Twin Mirror is no exception to the rule since the music part of the game involved 5 team members within the production: Game Director Florian DESFORGES, Cinematic Director Andrew DESMOND, Abigail GOUDJO Senior Associate Producer, Sébastien GAILLARD Audio Director of the Studio and myself. It is the united work of these five people that gave the game its musical identity.
Music plays a massive role in establishing the unique atmosphere of Twin Mirror and we needed to find an artist that would be able to compose a music that would tell a story and highlight the creative vision, themes, and emotions in the game.
Before finding David Wingo, we started a creative process that consisted in editing musical Mood Boards from early sequences, from visuals of environments and also sometimes only from character descriptions. From this work, we then began to search for artists who would be likely to "match" the musical color we wanted to give to the game.
In Twin Mirror, Sam, our main character, is a former investigating journalist coming back to his hometown, Basswood, West Virginia. He has an unusually analytical mind. Its unique abilities take the form of a multifaceted Mind Palace. It’s this unique mind that can lead him to dissociate from the social arena, where his logical, analytical personality sometimes hurts those around him. That’s when the Double comes into play, a more empathic and sociable version of himself that only he can see. Through these human qualities the Double is able to offer Sam an alternative when he needs to make important decisions.
The Mind Palace and the Double are at the heart of the game as they are representations of Sam’s complex mind. We needed to have a very clear vision of those elements to narrow down the list of artists we were interested in as we went through reviews. I was working in parallel with Sébastien, who had a more external vision of the project, and who came up with David. We didn't know him, but we were quite fond of the films he had worked on and especially his collaboration on Jeff Nichols' films (MidNigt Special, Take Shelter, Mud among others) for which there are points of similarity with the troubled psyche of our main character and the fantastic universe of his Mind Palace. And it was at that very moment, as we were listening to his compositions in the studio, that Andrew, Sebastian and I knew that David Wingo had to be the composer of the music for the game. It was a no-brainer. We then quickly made the collegial decision to approach his agent to talk to him about our project.
Working with David Wingo
Beyond the obvious aspect of the use of music, we wanted it to take a special place, to strengthen and add to the immersion in the story by successfully describing the complex personality of Sam while supporting discovery phases, action and environments the player goes through. DONTNOD is known for the quality of its soundtracks, so we had to take up the challenge after Life is Strange and the recent Tell Me Why amazing work without necessarily going in the same artistic direction.
David first composed generic themes for characters (Sam & The Double, Joan, Anna), environments (Mind Palace, Basswood, Tribes Cove etc...) based on the scenario and detailed descriptions of the emotions we wanted to convey in each scene. It was then that the iteration and reception phases of his work began, and from there the dominant sounds started to emerge. From these different themes, he then composed "à l'image" as the work of the camera artists and animators progressed until we finally arrived at the final result in the game, we are all quite proud of!
This is how the soundtrack of Twin Mirror was made and we are all at DONTNOD very proud to present you the fruit of this work in the form of a specially mixed and mastered collector's vinyl available for preorder here: https://www.diggersfactory.com/fr/vinyl/229747/david-wingo-twin-mirror
We hope that players will be able to recognize the whole universe of the game simply by closing their eyes and turning on the music!