Composer Jack Wall and team heighten an immersive gaming experience with Orchestral Tools sample libraries
For more than twenty years, the Call of Duty [COD] series has been a major trendsetter in the video game industry due to its increasingly cinematic presentations of the first-person shooter experience. COD: Black Ops — a sub-series within the franchise that explores the dark underbelly of covert operations — has included some of the series’ most adventurous entries and by extension, some of its most compellingly immersive gaming experiences. A key component of these experiences is the work of Jack Wall, a veteran games composer who since COD: Black Ops 2 has given each title in the series its own uniquely brooding musical identity. For COD: Black Ops 6, the latest instalment of the series set during Operation: Desert Storm, Wall and his co-composers turned to an evocative blend of tense orchestral themes and period-appropriate electronic and rock music to propel players headfirst into the game’s narrative. In their efforts to create the right blend of musical elements, Wall and his team frequently made use of Orchestral Tools sample libraries for the right sounds, feel, and inspiration.
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Like all entries in the Call of Duty: Black Ops series, the music of COD: Black Ops 6 operates from a core compositional mantra established by Wall back when he joined the series in 2011. Although each entry has its own feel and sound palette, all of them center on providing a very specific kind of experience for the player.
“It’s all about impact in these games because they are often pretty intense and don’t pull punches about the danger and drama in what’s going on,” Wall explains.
“From the beginning, the two guiding principles about the music have been that it needs to be melodically and texturally dark, and it needs to make the player feel cool while playing. Combined, those two principles help to elevate the experience of immersion and investment in the narrative and the playing experience.”
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