Hey guys
As of Friday, November 25th, Ubisofts Division 2 Countdown soundtrack is finally out.
Since some of you pointed that that there had been already versions out on Youtube, I wanted to address this and explain why YouTube rips of game music are wrong and why/how they are different from an official Soundtrack.
First off, when writing for the actual game, there is a whole different approach. While this game does not use the Wwise system (I will explain in another post), for the in-game experience, there are so called loops that have different intensities. So you have Ambient, Tension, Low combat and high combat, depending on whats happening during gameplay. They dont have real beginnings or real endings. They will use so called “Stingers” to start or end one loop.
You can’t use too much melody during combat. You dont want to distract the player too much with huge major themes ( I mean depends on the game too). Division has a lot of combat and i know as a gamer myself how too much super melodic music can be annoying.
From a dynamic perspective; the loops have to mesh in with all the voice overs, gun sound and the rest of the SFX. There is a lot going on so these loops are more ‘mellow’ if you will. Not mastered up to streaming standards.
So in the end, when it comes to releasing an official soundtrack, i will take one set of loops (remember, Ambient, tension, low and high combat) and figure out a new arrangement first. In this case, the actual game has more music than the soundtrack but thats in part because you consolidate a lot of the loops into a single track.
The listing experience of a score is a lot different than the having it together with visual feedback. So to me, a soundtrack release needs to tell a story without the need for visuals. Hence doing new arrangements, new themes, or exploring ideas that didnt work for in game - all go into making a proper soundtrack. Its a lot of work. For countdown, i worked 2 months on the arrangements alone. Then we have Sonny DiPerri, who mentored with the NIN engineer and also mixed Doomsday and Deus Ex, doing brand new mixes. The last step requires proper mastering. So as you can see, a lot of work goes into making a soundtrack alone.
Why YouTube rips are bad: the rips do not represent the Artist vision of the score, the uploaders will come up with fake title tracks and most of the time, don’t give credit to the original composer. I understand that this is what happens and its impossible to prevent but if you like the composer - you don’t want to listen to them. I can guarantee you most of us wouldn’t want you to.
With that said, I hope everyone is enjoying the new soundtrack!
Sascha
PS: dont be shy to comment.