Game of Thrones composer Ramin Djawadi talks scoring MMO game New World
By Dan Selcke
Before Ramin Djawadi returns to Westeros for House of the Dragon, he’s scoring Amazon’s new MMO game New World.
Ramin Djawadi is one of the best-known composers today. Even if you don’t know his name, you know his stuff: the music from Game of Thrones in particular became hugely popular, and he also provided the scores for shows like Westworld and video games like Gears 5. The guy is huge and can write his own ticket.
And now he’s chosen to work with composer Brandon Campbell for Amazon Studios on the upcoming massively multiplayer online video game New World, where players colonize an America-like continent in the 17th century. Djawadi told NME that the project intrigued him because it offered the chance to work on a “blank slate.” This is a brand new property, which presents creative opportunities and challenges.
“I think, in this case, the emotional hook for us – the main title melody – was the core of the game,” Djawadi said. “Everything else around it really had to be a wider range dynamically and musically because the world just seems open, it’s a lot bigger.”
According to Campbell, he and Djawadi “weren’t necessarily following an emotional story arc” but instead were “trying to capture the idea of a region or a specific emotion like war or despair, and so there wasn’t this giant overall arching narrative – but really, I guess everything kind of bounced off this main theme.”
Another pro about working on this game: total creative freedom. Whereas Game of Thrones Djawadi was (usually) bound to instruments that would be appropriate for the faux-medieval time period, on New World he and Campbell could “look for any instrument” to use in the soundtrack. “Amazon gave us so much freedom, where they just said, this is our vision, this is what we’re looking for, go and write. That’s what we did – it was incredible.”
New World has gone through several delays since its inception, but is finally coming out for PC on September 28. After that, Ramin Djawadi will return to Westeros to work on the Game of Thrones spinoff series House of the Dragon.
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