Age of Conan's composer talks inspiration, challenges

by Samuel Axon May 16th 2008 at 8:00PM

Filed under: Fantasy, Video, Age of Conan, Events, real-world, Interviews, New titles, News items

MMORPG met up with Age of Conan composer Knut Avenstroup at the Oslo launch event and spoke with him about the beautiful score he created for the game. During the four minute video interview, Avenstroup talked about adapting his creative process to the video game medium and staying motivated when faced with the intimidating task of creating three and a half hours of music.

He explained that he wanted to learn about ancient forms of music, since the game is set just before the dawn of recorded history. Unfortunately, he had a bit of trouble because "there is very little material to look into because the only thing they know about ancient music or music from two thousand years ago is based on the instruments that have survived. They are basically trying to find out what kind of music would be possible to play on these instruments, so there's not a lot to go on."

Despite that problem, he was able to draw on inspiration from several cultures -- including Arabic, Celtic, and Nordic -- and the scores of films set in the distant past.

Tags: age-of-conan, ancient, aoc, composer, funcom, interview, knut-avenstroup, launch-party, mmorpg, music, oslo, score, video