Made up of veterans from studios like DICE, Fatshark and Avalanche, The Outsiders are a team with hardcore action games and first-person shooters in their DNA. For this reason, David Goldfarb told usMetal interview: Hellsinger He doesn’t know how his colleagues will react when he comes up with the idea of developing a music game.
“For years I wanted to create a playset set in hellfire where the rhythm component and metal music were at the center of the experience,” the creative director said in an interview with Gamescom 2022. : Hellsinger came to mind years ago: I was playing Doom and listening to cannon music while killing demons left and right. I thought it was a good idea, but I was working on another game at the time, so I had to wait. right moment to propose to someone”. Yet there was no resistance: for the developers ForeignersThe idea of a Doom in a music key plucked the right strings.
“Everyone in the studio loves music and we have a lot of musicians among us,” the producer says. Shila Vikstrom. “David plays the guitar, I sing and others play an instrument or just devour music all day. Maybe not everyone likes metal, but the idea of working on a music project was immediately appreciated”.
pedal for metal
Goldfarb cites games like Doom 64, Rock Band, and Brutal Legends among his inspirations, but there was no such game when Metal: Hellsinger was in pre-production. “The team currently has about thirty people, but at the start of development there were only twenty,” says Vikström. “Since we started researching new speciesIt was much better to work with a small team so there was better communication between all members of the studio.”
When it finally launches in a few weeks, Metal: Hellsinger won’t be the only experiment to blend the shooter genre with that of music games, as it was beaten in time by Bullets for Minute (there’s also Gun Jam in development). BPM and Metal: Hellsinger are very similar to the point where it’s easy to confuse the two games, as they are both shooters who take out the demons of hell to the beat of the music. Still, there’s no doubt that the Aliens project promises to be more diverse, rich and refined, thanks to the work the Swedish team has responded to by creating a diversified and modular soundtrack. Vikström explains: “We did it original music for each level. While they’re all metal songs, each one is very different and represents a specific subgenre, so we’ve included a diverse cast of artists. The songs we compose are designed keeping in mind the atmosphere and sensations we want to convey at every level, both in terms of rhythm and narrative.
There are several reasons why the development team chose to compose the songs for the soundtrack in-house rather than using popular licensed songs. “One reason is strictly technical,” says Goldfarb. “We needed all the singles for every song root, that is, separate parts of all elements of the song. We have these different levels of Fury in the game: at level 1 the music is mostly in the background, maybe just synth and some percussion; then when you play well and move on to the next Fury level, new instruments are added, guitars kick in and the music gets more intense. If we had a ready-made song, we wouldn’t be able to make the experience as dynamic as we would like, technically and mechanically.”
This type of versatility is essential when it comes to perfecting or balancing things. game design. In Metal: Hellsinger, gun bullets and enemy shots depend on the bpm of the song in the background, so instead of affecting the damage of the gun or the number of creatures in each room, in some cases developers simply need to slow down. or speed up the speed of the song.
However, changing the difficulty level does not change the intensity of the song or the number of enemies on the screen: in addition to damage dealt and damage dealt, precision is paramount when entering varying inputs. “On low difficulty levels your timing may not be perfect and you may not be able to attack enemies, but at higher difficulty levels the game is much more violent and error-free,” explains Vikström.
The second reason is instead linked to the legal field and probability for enthusiasts and content creators. show the game on Twitch and on YouTube without violating any copyright. “Metal: Hellsinger is well suited for live streaming and we wanted people to be able to share their experience with others completely and without having to censor the audio,” explains the producer.
Working on the original songs allowed the team to create songs that tell the story of the world and the characters through the lyrics of the songs, while being consistent with the atmosphere and setting of each level. “The most enthusiastic players will understand that the songs are about the world and what’s going on,” adds Goldfarb. “We couldn’t have done the same thing if we had put Ozzy Osbourne’s songs into play.”
At a time when many people are discovering Metallica after watching an episode of Stranger Things, the Metal: Hellsinger team hopes their game will enable new people to learn about the different nuances of the music genre. “You may think you’re not a big metal fan, but as you listen to our soundtrack, you discover that there are metal subgenres you love,” explains Goldfarb. “For those who have never listened to metal, I can stay here and recommend bands like Black Sabbath and Iron Fire, but it would be great if people could find and appreciate the great bands out there through this weird shooter.”
Source: Multiplayer
