Behind the Music of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3

11/3/2008 10:00 PM | 3 Comments | Page 1 of 3

It's been seven long years since the last installment of the Red Alert series, and the world of music in games has changed considerably in that time. These days, concerts of game music performed by orchestras and choirs have become almost commonplace worldwide; the barriers between game, film and television composers are becoming nonexistent, with many composers regularly working in all three arenas; and modern blockbuster games just don't seem complete without a live orchestra backing them up.

Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 takes advantage of these modern trends with its ambitious score, but still maintains its signature attitude. Bringing back original Westwood composer Frank Klepacki to contribute some new material and update his "Hell March" and "Grinder" tracks from previous Red Alert games certainly adds authenticity to this latest title, but it's the work of Timothy Michael Wynn and James Hannigan, who wrote the bulk of Red Alert 3's nearly two hours of music, that brings the score to a new level.

Soldiers, sailors and spies

It was a quirk of fate that led Wynn -- who wrote about 65 minutes of music for the Allied and Soviet factions -- to the project. Having co-written the music for Warhawk and The Simpsons Game with Christopher Lennertz, Wynn noticed Red Alert 3 concept art on a wall while meeting with EA about another title. As a huge fan of the series who had played just about every game with "Command & Conquer" in the title, Wynn tracked down Music Supervisor Nick Laviers to talk about getting involved.

"We hit it off from the start, and we had the same vision for most aspects of the game," says Wynn. "We talked about the overall concept of each of the factions, and ... demoed out some of our ideas to hear how they would sound in the game." Once Wynn was attached to the project, Laviers kept him constantly supplied with gameplay footage and other material to help in the composing process as the game developed.

While it was clear from the early stages that the Soviet faction would use a brutal mix of orchestra, male choir and heavy metal, the Allies were harder to nail down -- perhaps appropriate, given their agile nature in the game. In fact, it was the Allies' tricky style that suggested giving them a stealthy, espionage sound that ramps up to punk rock for the combat scenes.

"But every map has something different thrown in," Wynn points out. "Greek music for the Mykonos map, '80s-style hip-hop for New York City ... it's incredibly diverse." There's even some mid-20th-century English classical music for the Brighton Beach map.

All Your Base Are Belong To Us

Meanwhile, halfway across the world in his Pinewood Studios base in London, James Hannigan was hard at work writing music for Red Alert 3's Empire of the Rising Sun faction. Hannigan, who worked in-house at EA in the 1990s with Laviers on titles like Privateer 2: The Darkening, was a natural choice for the project. He has worked as a freelance composer for years -- contributing to titles like Brute Force and Freelancer, and more recently scoring games like Evil Genius and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix -- but has also had a number of opportunities to work with EA and Laviers, and even won a British Academy award (BAFTA) with Laviers back in 2000 for the music to Sim Theme Park.