Unspokin - Dev Log 4 of 5

All About The Relationship

The Last Guardian

Because of its mirroring qualities to our game, we as a team played The Last Guardian; it was an interesting play.  Overall it was an impressive game and certain routes the developers took with mechanics and narrative really validated some similar routes we naturally took with ours.  I also noticed how infrequent the music was, but when it did play it was for milestone type progression, and I felt that was very effective.

Initially, I considered background music during our gameplay, but The Last Guardian made me doubt that approach.  I started composing the short music pieces to cue the different state changes of Killian.  The music ended up feeling far better than what I had in mind for background music, and would be most effective if of course, it is only played when necessary as opposed to something on-going in the background.

It then occurred to me that because the heart of our gameplay is the trust-based relationship between Cairenn and Killian, that whatever sound and music helps emphasize that would be best.  With that being said, on-going background music (even if more periodic) would become more about the environment and scenery perhaps, rather than the relationship.  There will already be a lot of dynamic and specific sounds for the various aspects of the relationship actions and moods, so allowing that to have its audible space to breathe I think would be most effective.
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We want the trust-based relationship to be the core gameplay, and rich enough that it could be enjoyed regardless of the setting.  In order to stay true to that, I need to ensure the sounds of the relationship are also rich enough so that they can be enjoyed regardless of whether there is music playing or not.  If I can achieve that, then the carefully selected and brief music pieces I do implement will just be icing on the audio cake.