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Birthday Greetings from George Oldziey!
... and George Oldziey, who composed the wonderful musical scores for Wing Commanders III, IV and Prophecy, was also kind enough to take time out of his schedule to comment on the WCP's development! He gives a very honest - and I think important - commentary on the project:
For me, the most memorable aspect of working on Wing Commander Prophecy was that it was the first WC game of the post-Chris Roberts era. In my opinion, Chris had gotten a bad rap from Electronic Arts, as well as internally at Origin, for "overspending" on Wing Commander 4. It was a very expensive project (over $10,000,000 I think), but it still garnered a profit for EA, just not what they had projected. It seemed to me that the heads at Origin, including the new WC producers, wanted to change up the overall look and feel of the game as much as possible without straying too far, all in an attempt to distance themselves from the Chris Roberts production values, which I thought were very successful. This revamping even came down to the music, as I was told by the new executive producer and his henchmen to make the music sound as little like Wing Commander as possible. "WHAT???", I thought to myself. In my opinion, all of the Wing Commander games prior to Prophecy had a very distinct musical sound, and I'd always thought it was my responsibility to be as true to that as I could. So, in the early stages of the composition of music for WCP, I was constantly being told that my music sounded too much like Wing Commander and had to be re-written. Needless to say, it was a very frustrating experience. I would look at some video, think about some mission music, and inevitably the WC "sound" would pop into my head for inspiration. To then have to go against that instinct almost drove me to the point of quitting. But cooler heads eventually prevailed and I was slowly allowed to make the music sound "reminiscent" of Wing Commanders past as long as I added some new elements. I agreed to that scenario and the music started to flow again. However, due to all that angst I have to say that WCP was my least favorite of the three games (WC3, WC4 and WCP) on which I worked, and thusly I think my music was perhaps less inspired than in the earlier games.
Just fyi, even though WC3 was my first game, and was a magical experience, WC4 was my favorite. When I listen to some of that music I think some of it is the best music I've ever written.
You can find some of George Oldziey's Wing Commander music online here.
[LOAF] [# 8089] [Discuss]
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Update published on 8/11/2007. View all news from that day.
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