debtOr for Borislav “Bobby” Slavov, being a composer alone isn’t enough. The Bulgarian musician sees himself as a man of many hats: composer, musical director, arranger, mixer. But back in 2002, he’d just finished his master’s in computer science and was working at the world’s fourth-largest software company. Unlike many of the other composers I’ve spoken to in this column, Slavov spends as much time as possible in the game studios he works with to weave his music “at a granular level” into the narrative and mechanics so that it doesn’t get “destroyed or chopped up.”
“I remember the day I came up with the main theme and Down by the River,” he told me before the sold-out show. Game Music Festival The concert, held at London’s Southbank Centre, featured the Philharmonia Orchestra performing over 80 minutes of music from the Baldur’s Gate 3 soundtrack. “I was walking along my favourite canal in the city of Ghent and the lyrics were swirling around in the back of my head. It was a special moment when I heard the theme tune. I stopped for a moment and thought this looks interesting, I have to record this now!”
Slavov told me that he ran back to his office, picked up his guitar, and immortalized the theme then and there: “I knew that if I didn’t do it quickly, I would waste the moment. A new composition means new emotions. When emotions come to me, I pick up my guitar and start playing. That’s how I capture the raw emotion.”
Perhaps unusually for a composer in an industry as highly digitized as video games, Slavov has a fairly old-fashioned mindset when it comes to process. He demos everything. Everything. Whether it’s a vocal track he sings or a simple sonic sketch with guitar and humming, the symphonic flower that underpins it swells and blossoms. Slavov’s phone is chock-full of small voice memos that serve as concept art for the final orchestral pieces of his music.
This is why Baldur’s Gate 3 sometimes sounds like a neoclassical suite, and sometimes like a West End musical. It all started with lyrical and melodic pencil lines, eventually adding scores for violins, violas, cellos, harps, clarinets, woodwinds and more. From seed to flower, Slavov nurtures and grows the music at every stage, unlocking the full potential of every track.
“Down by the River,” or to give it its less romantic title, “Main Theme,” is the heart of Baldur’s Gate 3. Between this song and the final track, “The Power,” a spiral of DNA is woven into every flashy, campy boss fight, heart-pounding beat of character development, and intriguing twist the epic story throws at you. Two main themes, one thoughtful and hopeful, the other grandiose and moving, appear multiple times and never feel out of place.
“The reason this became the main theme of the game is because it’s scalable,” says Slavov. “You can easily expand it, shrink it, stretch it left, stretch it right, and it can go in any direction. It can be melancholic, romantic, epic, dramatic, youthful, playful, whatever you want it to be. That’s how I define a main theme: a theme that has the power to go in any direction, that can wear the crown and carry the weight of the story.”
The same is true for players as they chart their own path through this gigantic, labyrinthine game. As you decide the story and progress along the path you choose (will you become a pure and untainted paladin? A vessel for the dark gods? A chaotic orc bard with sex on your mind?), the themes follow you. It’s not for nothing that the game won a Bafta for best music.
Baldur’s Gate 3 has its moments of surprising audacity, whether it’s a Broadway-esque boss fight in which the villain sings his own theme (yes, really) or a scene that locks you behind a plethora of specific choices more than 80 hours into the game, Larian’s masterpiece offers no shortage of rewards for honing your role-playing chops and playing the game your way. And, while it may not be surprising at this point, Slavov is always there at the end of the road, grinning, waiting to play a few melodic lines that are, at first glance, impossibly unique to you and your gaming experience.
“At Larian Studios, there’s no difference between main quests and side quests,” he enthuses. “That’s Larian’s greatest strength. We put our heart into everything we do. We would never say, ‘You know what, not many people are going to play this path, so don’t worry too much about it.’ No, we would never do that. That goes against the very essence and concept of player agency. It’s untrue and unfair to you to separate game elements, story, music, etc. into ‘more important’ or ‘less important’ aspects.”
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It’s painfully clear that Slavov is proud of what he’s accomplished with Baldur’s Gate 3. His eagerness to make sure you understand what he’s talking about, and the sharp honesty on his face when asked about the smaller moments of his music, paint a picture of a creative, lyrical soul with rock star energy who understands what makes game music so special for players.
Baldur’s Gate is based on Dungeons and Dragons, which has been around since 1974, and the tabletop RPG has a surprising amount of lore. One of the lesser studied parts of that lore is the “minor gods,” among them the “minor gods of song.” One of them, Miril, appears in the game. In gratitude to Slavov, the people of Larian secretly created Miril in his image, immortalizing him in DnD lore as the god of music. Not bad for someone who spent decades staring at a monitor in an IT job wondering if he could make it in the music world.
Source: www.theguardian.com
