Phantom Blade Zero Composer: Music for Some Bosses Was Created Before Their Designs

The soundtrack of the highly anticipated action game Phantom Blade Zero has emerged as more than a simple background sound and plays a central role in battle scenes. During a visit to the developer's studio (S-Game) in Beijing, Caisheng Bo (Caisheng Bo),

The soundtrack of the highly anticipated action game Phantom Blade Zero appears beyond a simple background sound and plays a central role in the battle scenes. During a visit to S-Game's studio in Beijing, Caisheng Bo, the game's composer, revealed that the composition process of this work went against the usual standards of the game industry, and the music for some battles was composed even before the design of the bosses themselves.

Unlike the usual projects where music is added after completing the game or reaching certain stages, in Phantom Blade Zero music was a primary priority. I created the music first for some of the boss fights.

This freedom of action is the result of a long-term trust between the composer and Soulframe, the game's creative director, which has been formed since they studied together in America. Knowing Bo's working style, Selfrim asked him for inspiration before designing bosses or battle scenarios:

He would say to me, “Okay, this piece looks great; Let me design a bass that fits your music exactly! For example, I think it was 2023 for the "Line Dance" bass. He asked me to make a piece. I asked: Do you have an artwork or a picture of him? And he said: No, I have nothing. Just give me a piece, just inspire me. I also said ok; However, in the end we did not use that particular piece because it was too early for that time. But overall, since we started out as an indie team, we've gotten pretty used to this style of workflow and production.

Bo emphasizes that his goal was not to create stereotypical orchestral pieces, but to combine 500-year-old traditional Chinese instruments with modern styles such as rock, metal and electronic music; An innovative and fresh approach that encouraged Chinese musicians to create new works outside of traditional old pieces.

Of course, not all of these pre-made musics made it to the final game. For example, a piece originally created for a sub-boss battle was rewritten due to negative reaction from some team members. However, the composer did not throw away this piece, as well as a strange fusion jazz work with Chinese instruments, and made them available to pre-purchasers in the form of an in-app music player in the deluxe version of the game:

I didn't feel like throwing it away, so I included the piece in the pre-order deluxe edition of the game. If you pre-purchase the deluxe version, you will get an in-game music player and you can listen to this track. In addition to that, I also did a jazz piece with traditional Chinese instruments, which sounded very strange! That piece is also included in the deluxe version; Because we couldn't really find a place in the game world to put it.