Mick Gordon Is Asking 'how Heavy Can We Get It?' In His First Full...

"It's celebrating that deformity, almost like some form of rebellion."

Australian composer Mick Gordon is one of the most widely-recognized composers in the videogame industry, with his signature propulsive, distorted, future-metal sound helping define id Software's wildly successful Wolfenstein and Doom reboots.

In the five years since a public falling out with longtime collaborator Bethesda, Gordon has contributed to metal projects, a large portion of Atomic Heart's soundtrack, and as a guest composer on Absolum, but he recently revealed he's working on his next full videogame soundtrack for the ambitious upcoming cyberpunk FPS, Defect. I recently sat down with Gordon and Defect director Emanuel Palalic to talk about the game, Gordon's work on it, and game music writ large.

"When Covid kicked up, there were a whole bunch of projects that got put on hold because people weren't really sure what was happening," Gordon said of his work in the 2020s. "I was finally able to say yes to a bunch of this band stuff that was coming up. I was able to jump in and do production role stuff with metal bands like Architects, Bring Me the Horizon, 3Teeth, and Monuments."

Defect, the first game from new studio emptyvessel, is promising singleplayer, co-op, and 4v4v4(v4?) asymmetric PvP, with gunplay balanced by an emphasis on exploration, disguise (via consciousness transfer possession, naturally), and subterfuge not dissimilar to Payday or the upcoming Thick as Thieves. In terms of story and art, Defect is all Dredd (2011), with mega-high rises and a world where all-seeing surveillance AI tries to contain criminal anarchy.

Gordon's eye was caught by Defect's unique visual, thematic, and gameplay identity, which he said "makes it very easy for me to slot in and just kind of do my thing there." But it also didn't hurt that Gordon and Palalic worked together before on Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal.

Palalic was a character artist on both games, but also directly collaborated with Gordon in the "metal choir" used for many tracks in Eternal. "I think Mick was one of the most talented musicians I've met," he said of the experience. "I remember, distinctly, being there and him just starting to tap the tempo out without, like, listening to anything. He just starts tapping a tempo out and kind of guiding the whole crew there."

Gordon said that one of his primary goals with any project is to not override its identity with his own style and hallmarks. That being said, he's still

Source: PC Gamer