Might & Magic Heroes VII Interview, Media Assets, and More
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There has been a flurry of activity on the official Might & Magic Heroes VII website since the strategy/RPG follow-up was announced last month, including an interview with composers Rob King and Paul Romero, the video of a recording session, a "Tales of the Ten Years War" backstory (part one and part two), a smattering of screenshots and concept art, and more. Let's start with the recording session:
And then move on to the interview:
2015 WILL MARK THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE HEROES SERIES. CAN YOU TELL US HOW YOU BECAME INVOLVED WITH MIGHT & MAGIC?
Rob King: I started working at New World Computing back in Feb. 1994 and was originally hired as (The Sound Guy) which then became the Audio Director. The idea of Heroes was spawned from an earlier title called King's Bounty that Jon Van Caneghem created back in his parent's garage I believe. It was one of the first projects I worked on at NWC. When I first saw the concept art I was quickly inspired to want to do a Baroque influenced Classical score. At this point my musical background was mostly writing Pop/Rock/Electronic music and I knew I needed a true classical guy to pull this off. About 6 months prior to getting my job at NWC I went to a party with a friend that just so happened to be at Paul Romero's house. Paul was already kind of known to throw these great parties with good food, drinks and talented musicians getting together to perform various repertoires of music. I met Paul in his kitchen over a glass of wine an instantly loved the guy as we discussed music and recording. Flash forward to when we started the concept of Heroes 1, I always had Paul in the back of my mind from our first encounter and decided to give him a call. I told him my idea for the game and he was pretty thrilled with the idea and was up for the challenge of doing a score for a video game.
Paul Romero: Rob asked if I could make some tunes in a baroque feel that sounded like Vivaldi, Bach, or Handel.. Since I grew up learning the music of Bach, Scarlatti and Handel I felt like knew how the harmonic and melodic content was structured for that particular time period. And so I told Rob the types of instruments and orchestrations needed for that kind of baroque-era feeling and he put together a full arsenal of sounds for me. Hence, this is how be began our partnership 20 years ago. We had one week to create the score for this first Heroes game). It was a fun fun time for me because I had never played a computer game and I had never created soundtrack music. I had only classical composed concerti, choral works, piano works, and chamber music for concert work. This was a whole new world for me: creating music to help make a fantasy world in a strategic computer game.
Rob King: As a side note, back in the early 90's is when games really started having thematic scores. Games like Lands of Lore, Myst, King's Quest and others. Most of the music was still done as General MIDI using sound chips on a Soundblaster or Turtle beach card. I really wanted a full sounding score so we opted for streaming the music from the CD player as you played. For Heroes II we used mp3 technology for disk streaming to avoid taxing the CD player after I had met Karlheinz Brandenburg from the Fraunhofer Institue at the AES show in 1995-96 up in San Francisco and I am pretty sure it was the first game to ever use it! :) Not to many people really know that bit of tech history. Boy did that technology go a long way!
We started writing the score in the bedroom of my apartment back in South Pasadena, Ca. It was also completed there using a very limited amount of gear! I think I had a couple Roland JV Modules and a couple AKAI S-1100's. Everything was programmed and mixed live straight to DAT. So happy about where technology is today! That pretty much was the beginning of our working relationship and friendship. Today I consider him my brother. A chance meeting that spawned a best friend 20 years later.
