‘Dying Light 2: Stay Human’ composer Olivier Deriviere on the video game’s kinetic score

Having created one of the most disruptive scores for a video game yet, French composer Olivier Deriviere chats about getting experimental for ‘Dying Light 2: Stay Human’

In a post-apocalyptic video game, using the environment of dilapidated buildings to parkour like a spider monkey to avoid the zombie-riddled ground is one thing... but having the music build intensity through bass and shifting tempo as you scramble up a wall, dart past a horde of zombies and leap off the edge to safety is something else. That is what you can expect if you play Techland’s Dying Light 2: Stay Human.

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The year’s first AAA (big-budget, blockbuster) title had plenty of intrigue surrounding not just its storyline but its gameplay on next-gen consoles and PCs. Despite its bugs at launch and somewhat predictable storyline, the gameplay itself motivated gamers to stick around till the end. Dying Light 2 follows Aiden, a social outcast, trying to find his sister in a world devastated by a virus... but the game has a ray of light amid all the chaos and ‘Lord of the Flies’ politics.

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Treating this essence very seriously from the start of pre-production is the game’s composer Olivier Deriviere, who sees video games as “a cultural object [that] reflects our world, society, existence.” Three years of working on the game produced a score that breathed life into a game of the undead, and gamers often find themselves bobbing their heads in time with the music— whether they are doing a fun exploration of the world, making a plot-changing decision or engaging in the most brutal combat.

Deriviere is thrilled at the response gamers have had to the music to the much-awaited sequel to the 2017 game. Avid gamers would be familiar with some of the titles he has worked on such as A Plague Tale: Innocence (2019), Remember Me (2013), Vampyr (2018) and Streets of Rage 4 (2020).

In an interview with The Hindu, Deriviere dives into why this project deserved a custom instrument and creating a new layer of immersiveness through music.