“It was always a dream to create something like this – and now we did it”
MeinMMO: When did you first have the idea to make music about video games and MMORPGs?
Falk: Well, actually quite early, or rather the other way around. I was clear that this was an idea for the band when I played Final Fantasy Tactics. It’s such a pixel game, but it has a soundtrack that’s so great, I think: “This can’t be true.” There are melodies that I walked around excitedly thinking: We really need to do something in the direction of sound for video games.
For me, it was more of the reverse story that you get inspired by these soundtracks. There’s a huge library for all these fantasy games, alongside what we call medieval music, which has incredibly great music.
I fell off my faith yesterday; I have to tell this, I was watching Kitchen Impossible. In the background, a song played that I thought: I know that! And what was it? The “God of War” soundtrack. And that played in the background at Kitchen Impossible. I also thought: Hey, it’s even getting to the point that gaming soundtracks are making it to television because it’s just a wide spectrum.
I think the boundaries are slowly blurring and are also being blurred further by projects like ours with ESO. You cannot separate it anymore. I claim that at some point it will be like with Star Wars, Star Trek, and Harry Potter. At some point, video game soundtracks will be the new classics. When you really go to the theater and listen to it with a large orchestra, what people have written for the small screen.
You listen to this soundtrack for days and hours. It just gets to your heart. This melody gets imprinted in your brain. There is simply a huge field of possibilities for the future that we cannot yet see properly.
Alea: God of War! I mean, it’s an opera. It’s unbelievable what’s happening musically. Then, Horizon: Zero Dawn, I get teary-eyed every time at the soundtrack; it’s unbelievable. Also because you always get the images in your head, because you played it. You connect something with it.
There’s this little video where Aloy grows up and jumps from one place as a child and arrives as an adult and then this song starts, and before that, there were just drums. I already get goosebumps just thinking about it.
Or the Skyrim soundtrack, damn it, that choral work at the beginning! And it was no different with Morrowind and Daggerfall. There’s a lot of great stuff musically. That’s why it was always a dream to create something like that. And now we did it.
“I like it when everything just fits – I experienced that with Elder Scrolls”
MeinMMO: When thinking of MMORPGs, many players don’t necessarily think of great stories, exciting worlds, and strong characters. What personally captivates you most about the world of Elder Scrolls Online?
Alea: I think this Daedric god world is awesome. Where there are Daedric gods at times that are incredibly exciting and simply not evil, like the Mistress of Twilight or Hircine. I mean, Hircine?! I pray to the hunter! That’s just such an exciting deity and immediately reminded me as a child of the 80s of Herne from Robin Hood. So cool, this figure with the antlers on the head, who is simply the great hunter.
And then simply these exciting intertwining. On one side Akatosh and the good gods. Well, they are not all that good; he also ripped Lorkhan apart. But just this god pantheon, that fascinates me tremendously. Every time it’s about daedric stories, I go crazy.
That Molag Bal is trying to pull Tamriel closer to the forgotten worlds and creating such a daedric reign, that’s just great. Simply great. That fascinates me about the lore. And it was created so long ago. It was already thick in Daggerfall, but by now it’s so thick that you need a library to write everything down.
Falk: I already showed a piece of my shelf earlier. That’s just 5 meters by 2.5 meters full of role-playing rulebooks. It’s really just role-playing rulebooks. That means I’m an ultra-nerd when it comes to background. I just like it when backgrounds work encyclopedically. I like it when everything just fits, and I actually experienced that with Elder Scrolls. Where we really met fantastic people who know it all by heart and have really internalized it.
That’s so strong and so exciting because it works in itself. And what I found coolest because you mentioned the gods, is that it’s not just 1 and 1 is 2. Every culture, so I have the impression, has a different look at the deities and it always seems different, even though they are the same gods.
I think it was deliberately worked so that each culture has a different access to the lore, and that’s just brilliantly done. That I can really say, I know what my culture knows, but that doesn’t have to apply to the other peoples.
That’s obviously mega. I know what it means to build a background and maintain it constantly without ruining it at some point. And that’s super difficult, so really respect, respect, respect.
“Oh no, now they even have elephants”
MeinMMO: The teasers for the “Pray to the Hunter” video appear to be produced exceptionally elaborately, and the pre-premiere of the music video in the Schauburg in Karlsruhe underlines that. How did it happen that the production became so grand?
Alea: I think we made the first draft for the song sometime in February. That was shortly after the shoot for the Dragonborn video. However, the idea for such a clip came even earlier. After the video for “My Mother Told Me,” our Robin constantly came up to us and said: “I want a battle; I want to shoot with a lot of people. We have to manage that someday!” And everyone who was somehow involved in organizing the previous videos, including both of us, just put their hands over their heads and shouted, “Nooooo, please not.” But – of course, we were excited about it.
And when we returned with the first demo of the song, which even had a different text on it, Robin called me during the ride and said he had an amazing video idea. And then he told me the entire story that we recorded now. He had it in his head since February or March simply finished. Although the song was not yet finished, but that was his idea for this thing. Because for him, it was also a cool thing that the good guys fight against the bad ones in the style of Elder Scrolls Online.
Falk: What is very exciting about this: We are talking about February 2022. So, we didn’t spend 10 years preparing, which one could think. We have a great team, we have incredibly enthusiastic cosplayers on board. And we have our Alea, who simply makes day into night when it comes to costume design or prop building. We’re used to as a band to make the impossible possible. I believe if we were a normal video production company that had to work from 9 to 5, none of this would have been possible.
But this way, we could really exploit ourselves massively and made this really crazy film in relatively no time. I believe that is really the extraordinary part. That it doesn’t look like how much effort we put behind it.
Alea: I can say pretty precisely that we had the “go” 3.5 weeks before the shoot. Not before. And I kept nagging because people, I still have to build the costume? I have to start sometime? Damn it, give me a yes or no. We are talking about a Bretonian hero armor from the trailers, which we thought was cool. I also thought it was cool. And only 3.5 weeks before, did the “go” come – now let’s go.
Then Mareike, who works with us, started contacting all the cosplayers I had already gathered earlier and all the people who had previously been part of our productions. Armors had to come, shields had to come, props had to come, a location had to come. And all of that happened within 3.5 weeks.
The costume that I wear in the video, I finished just three hours before departure for the shoot, and until 1 a.m. on the same day, a friend of mine, Sabrina, did the coloring with me in our attic.
Falk: And now it must be said: The costume that he wears in the film is the stripped-down version. He fully recreated the complete armor, as seen in the game trailer. It looks so real! However, for the scene we needed, it would have been a bit over the top. We had to explain to him that we can’t use the entire costume and he has to redesign it a bit less glamorous at night. That was truly unbelievable.
Then we had a second male lead, who is simply un-fucking-believable. If you want to add anything, Alea?
Alea: Sure, this is about Tetzel, the semi-god blacksmith. He is one of the five strongest men in Germany, a strongman. He is a giant, really has an arm like my calf. We really tried desperately to put together an outfit for him. It simply didn’t work; we couldn’t find armor that fit him.
The armor looked really 1 to 1 like the armor of the Duke of the Rising from High Isle. And we just couldn’t get the guy into it. We then put together a costume on site. After the first day of shooting, we put something on him and took pictures.
The Bente, someone who supports us on-site with props, as things often break, then sat down at the sewing machine and crafted the thing together in one night. The next morning we colored it and then it was done. This is really incredible.
Falk: Incredible things happened. We even had elephants. You don’t see them in the film, but once elephants actually showed up because there was a zoo nearby. They walk their elephants for a walk, and then the people were already desperately saying, “Oh no, now they also have elephants.” But they just walked through the scene; everything was completely bizarre.
On page 3 of the interview, you will learn about the future of music about video games and what an MMORPG needs to capture both of them.
