By Winifred Phillips | Contact | Follow

Glad you’re here!  I’m Winifred Phillips. I’m the author of the book “A Composer’s Guide to Game Music” from the MIT Press, and I’m also the composer of the original soundtrack for the video game Assassin’s Creed Liberation.  The Assassin’s Creed Liberation game was the ninth game in the incredibly popular Assassin’s Creed series, released between Assassin’s Creed III and Assassin’s Creed Black Flag.  As a smash-hit bestseller that continued the top-selling franchise, the Assassin’s Creed Liberation game won the Writers Guild Award for its outstanding script by Jill Murray and Richard Farrese!  The game also won multiple awards for the music I composed, including a Hollywood Music in Media Award, a Game Audio Network Guild Award, a Global Music Award, and a GameFocus Award.  In this article series, I’d like to talk with you about my musical score for the Assassin’s Creed Liberation game.

The Assassin’s Creed Liberation project was an enormous undertaking, and I’m tremendously gratified that my music was well received!  However, what I wanted most as a game composer was for the members of the development team to find my work inspiring.  I’m inspired every day by what expert development teams do!  I’m inspired by their art, scripts, characters, and most of all, gameplay.  All that inspiration helps me to compose music that will hopefully support the vision of the team.

In this series of articles, I’m going to be sharing the inspirational experience of working on the Assassin’s Creed Liberation game, creating the musical style and the themes for this awesome project.  I’ll be sharing some ideas and techniques that I hope will spark a sense of discovery, adventure, and creative enthusiasm.  As artists and creative professionals, enthusiasm is a vitally important resource for us!  Researchers from the University of London described enthusiasm as “part of the creative act,” and said that “this is what makes it one of the most precious commodities in the creative industries.” Enthusiasm unleashes creative energies and helps us to overcome our self-imposed limitations.

When I was prepping to start work on the Assassin’s Creed Liberation game – and actually, when I start work on creating music for any game – I always ask myself first, how can music get players more excited and involved?  How can music juice up the enthusiasm of the team? In other words, what can music do for this game?

What can music do?

Assassin’s Creed Liberation is an entry in the famous action stealth game series, featuring a strong focus on narrative, and a deep backstory developed by the previous games in the franchise. I think music in a great game like Assassin’s Creed Liberation can increase gamer enthusiasm in two big ways.  I’ll be exploring those two big ideas throughout this series of articles. Let’s take a quick look at them now.

1. Music can aid in the experience of immersion in a time and place.
2. Music can function as a conveyer of symbolic meaning.

We’ll be talking about both of those ideas – but let’s start with immersion in a time and place.

Assassin’s Creed Liberation is a significant game on a number of levels. The game is structured around an important period of American history, focusing on a social and cultural environment that isn’t all that widely known.  Most of us are familiar with the main chronology of the Revolutionary War, but not so many people know about that same period in New Orleans. In the 18th century, the city of New Orleans was dealing with civil unrest under Spanish rule after the French and Indian War.  Much of the city’s participation in the revolution involved running supplies to the colonies.  Culturally, the city had very strong and sharply contrasting influences, with an affluent French citizenry – mingling with Spanish occupying forces – and an established African society consisting of both freed citizens and slaves.

For a historical game, the realism of the setting hinges on our ability to accept the surroundings and events as true-to-life, and music can help make that happen.  As the composer for Assassin’s Creed Liberation, I wanted to reflect the game’s inherent cultural diversity in its music.  I knew this multicultural social framework had the potential to help the player feel a sense of immersion, which could enable a better appreciation for the time and place in which the game is set.  So let’s dive into that topic!

The world of Assassin’s Creed Liberation

One of the first things I did when I was hired to compose the music for Assassin’s Creed Liberation was dive into research.  Assassin’s Creed Liberation is about the life and times of Aveline de Grandpré, the first female assassin to helm an entry in the Assassin’s Creed franchise.  Aveline grew up with her father, a wealthy French aristocrat.  She was raised by her loving stepmother, Madeleine.  Her biological mother, however, was a woman named Jeanne – a West African who was abducted and brought to America as a slave.

Essentially, Aveline comes from two worlds. She’s balanced between her privileged European upbringing, and her African cultural heritage.  As a character, Aveline is a blend of cultures, and I thought that the music would best reflect her character and the world she lived in if it were also a cultural fusion.  First, let’s take a look at an example of that musical approach, from the Main Theme of the game. In this composition (featured in the video below), I was attempting to reference Aveline’s important cultural influences, from her affluent French upbringing to her African birthright.

This main theme was meant to set the tone for the whole game.  In the main theme, we can hear the dual musical genres at work – African rhythm and voices set against Baroque strings. There’s a dual message here, and it’s an important precedent to set at the beginning of the game.

Since Aveline lived in 18th century New Orleans, I did some reading about that time in history.  I also listened to music dating from the period – especially French Baroque music.  The French Baroque musical style is characterized by formality, sophistication and lots of ornamentation. Aveline was raised in a French Baroque cultural environment, and I wanted that sense of affluence and delicacy to inform the music of the game.  Let’s check out an example of that approach:

At the same time, Aveline never forgets her African heritage.  I didn’t want the player to ever forget it either.  With that in mind, I researched African tribal music and dances.  I investigated playing techniques of traditional West African instruments such as djembe, talking drum and tambin flute.  I studied African vocal and choral techniques. Also, since we are talking about New Orleans, I researched the music of Louisiana Voodoo and its origins in Haitian Vodou ceremonies.

Let’s listen to another short excerpt below.  This music demonstrates how the Baroque and African musical genres were combined in the game. In the video, you’ll hear one of the high-energy action tracks that triggers when Aveline makes a quick getaway.

That getaway music features vigorous string techniques characteristic of a Baroque overture or concerto, combined with a forceful African rhythmic foundation. The dual message of Aveline’s divided heritage continues to be communicated by the music.  I hoped this technique would immerse players in Aveline’s world, and help them to be excited about playing her character in the game.

So we’ve now taken a look and listen to the musical building blocks of Aveline’s world – the roots of her cultural heritage.  These deeply-ingrained influences have built her character and informed her choices, which then shape the world around her.

In part two of this article series, we’ll be examining specific techniques that enable the music to lend character to the game’s 18th century world and cultural depth to its locations.  In the meantime, you can learn more about composing video game music in my book, A Composer’s Guide to Game Music.  Thanks for reading!

Winifred Phillips is a video game composer known for her Grammy® Award-Winning original musical score for the video game Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord.  The Grammy® winning soundtrack will soon be available as a premium vinyl LP (available for preorder now)  The official soundtrack can also be heard on Spotify.  In addition to her Grammy® award, Phillips’ Wizardry soundtrack has also won a Society of Composers & Lyricists Award.  Phillips is known for composing music for games in many of the most famous and popular franchises in gaming: Assassin’s Creed, God of War, Total War, The Sims, LittleBigPlanet, Lineage, Jurassic World, and Wizardry.  Her music for Sackboy: A Big Adventure garnered a BAFTA Award nomination.  Phillips’ other awards include the D.I.C.E. Award, six Game Audio Network Guild Awards (including Music of the Year), and four Hollywood Music in Media Awards. She is the author of the award-winning bestseller A COMPOSER’S GUIDE TO GAME MUSIC, published by the MIT Press. An interview with her has been published as a part of the Routledge text, Women’s Music for the Screen: Diverse Narratives in Sound, which collects the viewpoints of the most esteemed female composers in film, television, and games.  Follow her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.