How Alan Wake 2’s Composer crafted the sound of The Dark Place
Welcome to a stacked Tuesday slate of stories from Game Developer. We're leading with a feature interview with Alan Wake 2 composer Petri Alanko. We also have features on 25 years of Grasshopper Manufacture with Suda 51, on the creation of Land Above, Sea Below, and we're highlighting a feature on the making of Left 4 Dead from last week. We also have plenty of news, from the likes of Embracer, CD Projekt, and more.
Learn what insidious instruments are at the heart of Alan Wake 2's score.
To create the more demonic sounds of Alan Wake 2, he built a device from a 1950s enamel washbowl to process the brass through. “I attached piezos and contact mics to it and fed sounds through it,” he said, “ I made a set of impulse responses from it, which I then used in every single possible convolution plugin I could possibly get my hands on.”
Alanko also used an instrument with a name straight out of an Alan Wake novel—the Apprehension Engine and The Mega Marvin. The former is a large stringed instrument that Alanko calls a beautiful wooden beast. It was created to make sounds for horror movies. Alanko spent hours trying to get the most appropriately murderous samples from the device.
“That machine oozes horror,” the composer said.
Péter Takács, co-founder of Glasscannon Studio, tells us how the striking look of fall by the seaside inspired the game’s creation.
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