Mick Gordon on Helping Build Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2's 'Big and Bombastic' Climactic Boss Fight

If you were making a sequel to Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun and wanted to inject a little extra flair into the boomer-shooting flick, you'd probably look no further than Mick Gordon. The legendary Australian composer has been churning out video game scores for nearly two decades, but it was his work on 2016's Doom and 2020's Doom Eternal that really established his monstrous guitar riffs as a great way to excite first-person shooter fans. So, it looked like developer Auroch Digital would use Gordon to add a prominent role to the climactic boss fight at the end of Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2.

IGN: How did you get involved with Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2? Were you familiar with the first game?

Mick Gordon: Yes, absolutely. So I emailed the team after the first Boltgun game and said, "Hey, this game is really cool. There's a lot of shooters out there right now, but I think what you've done with it is really good. The game is really fun. And you've obviously combined this pixelated, sprite-based, first-person shooter, first-person shooter Warhamerunio with this game. It seems like the most obvious idea that no one has ever thought of." had not

So, I had a little bit of a relationship with them when they were doing the sequel, and they shot me an email. They're like, "You know what? We have this giant boss battle at the end, and it's on a scale that didn't appear in the first game, and we want to have music for it to match that scale, something that's really big and scary and crazy. Do you want to do it?"

And of course, I was like, "Yeah, I'd totally love to." I've always wanted to, but never got into the Warhammer universe. I've always wanted to dabble in that territory, but [I was] never given the chance until this one came along. So there's the first-person shooter aspect, the Doom-inspired first-person shooter aspect, there's the pixelated aspect, this giant, demonic boss battle, and then there's the Warhammer thing. So, I mean, how can you not say yes to that? It's like a match made in heaven, isn't it?

IGN: When something like this falls into your lap, do you start completely from scratch or do you have a folder on your MacBook labeled "Sick First-Person Shooter Riffs" and you just kind of pull some of them out and start sculpting with them?

Gordon: No, definitely not. My job in every project is to try to deliver a unique sound that suits that project and that project only. I like to think of these things as something that comes to mind exists in a sphere in the universe, and that sphere belongs to that thing, and that project, and that is unique in that space. When I want to bring something else, I can't push that sphere into the space where that other sphere is. Do you know what I mean? I have to come up with something that takes its own space.

Now, of course, people will say, "Well, we listened to your music, it sounds like you did this, it sounds like you did that, you did that." I know you can never completely separate yourself from your own tastes and opinions. So, I understand that. But my goal is to try and work with the team to come up with something unique that only fits the purpose of the music for that particular project. So, I don't just have a bunch of [pre-existing] riffs or ideas that I put into this game, and this game, and this game. This is not my job. My job is to sit with the team and try to find what makes their thing unique and really blow it up [kind of] musically.

IGN: As part of the process of making your song, "Rise of Arkifane," did you actually play the boss battle yourself?

Gordon: It can be difficult because most games aren't fun until they're finished and ready for release. Do you know what I mean? And often due to the rapid development of these games, builds are made several times a day. So, it can be very difficult for a team to send me a stable build to actually work with.

Instead, what they do is they send me recordings that the QA department compiles for me. And the QA guys, it's their only job to play the game all day. So, they're really good at it, and they're really good at making it look the way it's supposed to be. And that's perfect. That's all I need. They send it to me. They send me screenshots. They send me concept art. I'll talk to the developers and stuff. But I love video. Videos are the best.

Why I like videos is when I shoot it in my studio, I shoot the video, and I put the video on my TV, and I'm sitting on my couch, and I have a controller in my hands that's not even plugged in, right? Here it is, and I'm sitting on my couch imagining myself as a first time player. The reason I do this is to try to find the perfect tempo for what the music should be to match what I see. Then I have a little metronome app on my phone that sits on my lap and I literally tap the metronome speeds and write them down in a notebook and say, "This level should be 99 bpm. This level should be 138. This level should be 216 bpm." And my main reason is to try to find a speed that matches the natural pace of the gameplay itself.

I have to do this because if the song I make is too fast, it becomes overwhelming and annoying for the player. At that point, players go to the options menu and turn the music down or off. And if they do, I'm totally screwed. Not just in my career, but in life in general. If my music is too slow, reviewers might say, "This game looks slow. This game looks slow. The game itself isn't quite as exciting." Do you know what I mean? That even if the game is tight, even if the game feels really good, the mechanics are there, everything is really nice and polished, if the music is too slow, the whole experience can feel really slow, you know?

So, my job is to find just the right speed. Once I get up to speed, then everything can be built from that point. I set everything up in my studio at that pace and then start building ideas to match the game itself.

IGN: When the developers of Boltgun 2 gave you the artwork and gameplay videos, did you lock yourself in your studio and produce the song by yourself? Was there a lot of back and forth with the development team?

Gordon: It's definitely a back and forth thing. I mean, you have to understand that when I start working on a project, there's nothing. There is nothing. It's a completely blank canvas, you know? I don't even have a sharp pencil at that point. there is nothing And I don't get anything for free. It's like nobody comes up and says, "Make this in D minor at 90 bpm" or whatever. nothing nothing at all

I have to experiment. I have to try. And I'm big on finding teams and people that I like to work with and feel comfortable failing with. So, when I come up with an idea, I feel more confident. This might be a stupid idea because I need the team to be able to start saying yes or no to some things. It's definitely a collaboration I have with them. Like anyone doing with a computer-based startup, [I] have a million possibilities. I can do anything. I can play a full video game score on the laptop if needed. Anything is possible these days.

When we're in the final boss battle, I can come in and be the loudest, most obnoxious bastard in the room.

What happens with that freedom is choice paralysis. There are a million different decisions that need to be made all the time. And when faced with a branching path between decision A or decision B, I need a determinant of which path to take. Now, I can do a lot of this on my own, of course, with my own tastes, my own opinions, but at some point I have to say to someone who's much closer to the project, who's been working on it for several years, "Hey, do you prefer A or B or C or D or A, whatever."

So, there's definitely that back and forth, and I love that, too. I like it because it starts to involve them, and they start to feel like they're part of the music, and their input starts to develop and shape the song as a whole.

IGN: Was it a unique challenge specifically to take on the soundtrack, which is the climax of the game? Where your job is to basically maximize the player experience to its absolute limit?

Gordon: It is, but it also affects this rather unpleasant part of my personality, which is the desire to walk into a room and be the proudest bastard in the place. And when we're in the final boss battle, I can come in and be the loudest, most obnoxious bastard in the room.

IGN: That sounds like fun [laughs]. Is it also somewhat bittersweet in another way considering that your music wasn't released until the end of Boltgun 2, and statistically probably only a fraction of the audience will actually get to it?

Gordon: Yeah, that's a really good point. When I make this massive game score, I know that there is a large percentage of players who will never hear this little piece of music. There's music that I have in games that I even know from Doom and stuff that people have never [or] even rarely heard. For example, the whole song Rip & Tear is about 28 minutes. What's the version that sits on the album, three minutes or something? I had to delete a lot of stuff to put on Spotify. There's a lot in there that people only hear when they're doing something really special and really unique.

But I also like it because I got the feeling I had as a child to find a hidden area or to find something secret. It made me feel more connected to the game, you know? I felt like it had a little secret thing, and I knew that the little streak now [meant that] the game and I had a little bit of a deeper relationship now, you know?

So I love the fact that there's only a small percentage, and it's—when you look at the actual numbers on Steam or whatever, it could be like 6 percent of people getting to the boss battle. It's crazy, [but] I don't care. I love it. I think that's really cool because for those 6% of people who get it, they get something special and unique. Do you know what I mean? And I can develop a relationship with that player that other people don't have. I think that is really very special.

IGN: Speaking of Doom, your work on that series was remarkable because it became more than background music, it actually had an active impact on the player. Like the rhythm of music basically dictates the rhythm of action and vice versa. It was like a perpetual motion machine. Is this the absolute ideal for you? That your combos are literally riding shotgun with the player?

Gordon: Yeah. A term I like is "forward motion." I love that games are the only art form where there is a direct connection between the audience and the art itself. If I am in an art gallery, there is a distance between the canvas and me, the viewer. If I am watching a movie, there is a distance between the movie itself and me sitting on the couch. But a game only works when you, the player, interact with it. Without it, the game is useless. It does nothing. It needs your input.

So, there's this cyclical thing between you and the game. This cycle you work backwards and forwards. The player is a colleague. Very important, if you take the player out, there is no game. Totally useless, you need it. So, I always try to think about how it works.

Now, this just doesn't work philosophically. It works on a technical level. My music for a game is basically a three or four or five hour song. This is a song. There is a session. That song is split into small segments that are then rearranged based on what the player is doing. If the player is low on health, if they're entering the next level, if they're fighting a boss, if they're doing really well, if they're not doing really well, if they're in a tutorial... whatever, if they're playing with their friends, the music will change based on what they're doing. They are literally under control. They're conductors, so there's always this relationship between what I'm doing and the player. This is absolutely very important. And this is always in the back of my mind. I can't escape it. This is literally the nature of video games.

Warhammer 40K: Boltgun 2 is out now for PlayStation 5, PC, and Xbox Series X|S, with a Nintendo Switch 2 version coming at a later date. You can check out IGN's review of the retro-style first-person shooter sequel here, where we gave it an 8 out of 10 and declared, "An explosive sequel that packs a bloody punch."

Tristan Ogilvie is a senior video editor at IGN based in Sydney, Australia. Prior to joining IGN in 2009, he served as Deputy Editor at The Official PlayStation 2 Magazine Australia and as Editor of The Official Xbox 360 Magazine Australia. You can find him on Bluesky @tristanogilvie.bsky.social.