Towerborne is a new video game from Stoic, the company behind The Banner Saga, that takes the structure of a side-scrolling beat-em-up and mashes it together with tried-and-true RPG elements. Designed to be accessible for the whole family, the fantasy action game is easy to pick up and has both online and couch co-op. In the game, you play as an Ace–a hero working to reclaim lost territory and protect innocents in a fantasy world overrun by monsters.

It’s to Towerborne’s credit that it feels much bigger than a traditional side-scroller. This is thanks in large part to its RPG elements, which allow players to unlock new areas of the world and visit combat-free hub zones, but there’s also a more subtle, yet ever-present reason–the game’s musical score by Journey and Aliens: Fireteam Elite composer Austin Wintory. Wintory leaned into a lush orchestral feel for Towerborne and wrote music tailored to the game’s different story locations, giving the world an immersively vast sense of scope.

ScreenRant spoke with Austin Wintory about his work on Towerborne. Wintory reflected on how his work on the game differed from his past collaborations with developer Stoic on The Banner Saga, and why the orchestra was an important part of this project. Additionally, the composer shared insights into the composing and recording process. For more on the game, check out ScreenRant’s Towerborne PC preview.

The Bold Idea Behind Towerborne’s Music

Wintory Developed A “Next-Gen Interactive Music Concept” He Dubbed The Serendipity System

Austin Wintory worked on Towerborne for five and a half years, starting shortly after The Banner Saga 3 was released in 2018. While he wasn’t only working on Towerborne for that whole time (he shared that he also scored Aliens: Fireteam Elite within that window, and he’s had other games release over the last six years), the composer was “obsessively thinking about future-proofing” the music of Towerborne and spent years developing what he called “was almost like a next-gen interactive music concept.”

That concept was ambitious: “It was meant to feel like there's an orchestra in the room just keenly watching your playthrough and mirroring it with a level of precision [up to now] unheard of.”

Wintory’s ideas eventually evolved into Towerborne’s Serendipity system, which was designed to accommodate the potential ways in which the live-service game could grow. In Wintory’s words, “If we’re still hopefully contributing new material to this 10 years from now, what are the kinds of foundations that we will be benefitting from, versus what would have boxed us into a corner?” Wintory toyed with the idea of writing music that changed based on what weapon a player was using, for example, but if Towerborne ends up having 100 different weapons for players to choose from, “That original idea is totally impractical.”

Wintory and his collaborators settled on something, which was that “the sense of continuous forward momentum is really going to be what matters above all.” He clarified that this was in regard to the music for missions, not for when players are in the home base tower and speaking with NPC’s. As for when and how the music would shift stylistically, it was about Towerborne’s biomes. “As you explore further into the map, you uncover new biomes,” the composer said, “So I wanted the music to have an evolving sense of danger and far-from-home-ness.”

“The stakes get higher the further out you get,” Wintory continued. “The idea is there are correlations between the tone of the music and the tone implicit in the environment. The forest that's full of fungal growths and a lot of surreal colors feels very different than this beautiful green blue sky countryside. Just looking at the art alone, you feel something different, so the music is trying to capture that and acknowledging that those things correlate to [being] further and further from the tower. And the tower is very much home and represents safety.”

How Austin Wintory Got An Orchestra To Follow You Around

“We Would Spend Hours On A Single Chunk of Music”

By and large, each piece of music in Towerborne is three to five minutes long, “which, in video game , is really long,” Wintory shared. The composer wanted to make sure the natural rises and falls found in full pieces of music could lead to serendipitous moments (hence the name): “The idea is that there are going to be times where you get into a scuffle and the music is going to naturally be building as you do that and it's going to beautifully capture what's going on.” But Wintory made a point to add, “That is not enough.”

What really sets Towerborne’s music apart is the fact that Wintory recorded multiple versions of every piece so that they could be seamlessly mixed and matched in real time to present the illusion of an orchestra matching a player’s situation. “The system is measuring how big of a danger you’re in at any given moment,” the composer said, “I would take these long pieces, and I recorded them essentially five levels deep of alternate energy levels.”

“I would write the piece, I would record the orchestra playing it really quietly, and then I would record the entire piece again with them playing it as written. Then, I'd record the entire thing again where it was like, ‘Hold nothing back.’”

“What happens is, as you are taking down guys,” Wintory said, “the orchestra is downshifting in energy … and you really feel this emotional change.” But he went even deeper, going as far as to record the large orchestral pieces without the leading melodies so that he could be afforded further customization.

“Hearing a melody fade out is so transparently obvious,” Wintory said, “So the way it works is, as the orchestra’s downshifting, the melody keeps going … and what you don’t realize is that below [it], everyone is getting quieter. Then, as we’ve now reached this lower energy state [with] fewer guys or no guys anymore on screen, the melody will naturally reach its end.”

In this way, the Serendipity system tricks listeners out of noticing the music is becoming less intense–but the work to make that happen was very intense indeed. “It’s simple, but it’s somehow also really complicated,” Wintory itted, continuing, “We were in the studio with the orchestra here in Los Angeles for a week straight, recording where we would spend hours on a single chunk of music, because you have to record it all these different ways. It’s also wickedly challenging music, so the orchestra had their work cut out for them.”

Towerborne’s Unique Musical Tone, Explained

“The Optimism Of It Was Really Important”

The music of Towerborne hits a number of marks. It’s family-friendly, feels organic to the world of the game, and doesn’t fall into what must have been a temptation to go retro, given Towerborne’s very classic gameplay inspirations. “It can be tricky,” Wintory said of finding the right feeling, revealing that the key consideration became that “the optimism of it was really important. It should feel like, at its darkest, it’s not really dark. It would not feel at home in The Last of Us, or even in The Banner Saga games that earnestly explore heavy subjects and challenging ideas.”

“This is hopeful and joyous in the sense of when a dog is just so happy to be alive.”

That idea led Wintory to the idea that “it’s sort of circus-like or fantastical … the idea that we’re putting on a show. It’s not meant to feel grounded and realistic–this is meant to be kind of delightful.”

But why the orchestra? “Arnie Jorgensen, our creative director, said ‘I want to play with my kids. I want a game that has a kind of optimism and a joyousness and a Miyazaki-esque elegance,’” Wintory said, adding, “I was not told any more specific direction than that high-level goal.” Wintory would go on to choose the orchestra because “there’s something about the marriage of traditional acoustic instruments and [Towerborne’s artistic] aesthetic that just feels very, very right,” and because “the orchestra does really well when momentum is of importance.”

In of inspiration, Wintory cited “Don Bluth and Disney cartoons,” which had scores that “tended to be very, very, very melodic.” He also name-checked Carl Stalling, who composed for many early Looney Tunes comics and secretly introduced generations of people to classical orchestral music: “Anyone who grew up from the ‘50s to the 2000s,” Wintory said, “will [hear Looney Tunes music and] go, ‘Oh, that makes me think of Bugs Bunny.’ They wouldn’t necessarily realize it’s from an Italian opera by Rossini.”

When it comes to Towerborne, the composer shared, “I thought, ‘Boy, I love the idea [that] when they play this game, they’re going to hear real musicianship from these musicians, in that same tradition of these classic artful Looney Tunes and Disney animations.’” This led Wintory to not only write for a full orchestra, but compose music that was “Olympic to perform” so that “when a family sits down and plays, they hear something that you just don’t hear, typically.”

“I'd never written a score that had these particular considerations baked into them.”

Austin Wintory Reveals Stoic Co-Founder Arnie Jorgensen’s One Musical Request

“It’s Grounding It In Something That We All Understand”

As much work went into the orchestral music of Towerborne, when you visit the game’s central hub, the music becomes totally piano-driven. “The piano, actually, was one of the very few musical requests that Arnie made,” Wintory revealed, continuing, “Piano, as a texture, seemed to tap into exactly what the goal of this game is.” The composer believes the psychological effect of the instrument is such that “Whenever I hear piano, it’s kind of like I’m safe.”

Wintory has a theory for why this works: ”Piano is one of those that just fits into everyone’s life. No matter if you’re a lawyer, you’re a writer, you’re a journalist, or you’re a physicist, piano is just a thing that seems to sink its way in.” In his mind, “It’s grounding it in something that we all understand, whereas the orchestra has this potential to be otherworldly.”

It felt natural, then, for piano to reflect safety in the world of Towerborne. “Every time you come back to the Tower and you’re customizing your character, upgrading your gear, talking to the NPCs, or just hanging out, we want there to be a real homey quality.”

But, like the rest of the score, it’s not as simple as it sounds. “We actually had two pianos in the orchestra,” Wintory revealed. (He also shared that the orchestra itself had a lot of unconventional instrumentation, with things like an accordion section, a recorder section, and a Thai instrument called a khaen.)

“We had a big Steinway grand piano, and then also a rickety upright piano, [for] which I specifically requested, ‘Don’t tune it.’”

The Tower’s music, though, was played only on the grand piano by Grammy-winning pianist Gloria Cheng. And Wintory leaned on Cheng’s expertise, encouraging her to play the “ludicrously challenging” compositions with no metronome. Wintory did jump in when other instruments ed Gloria’s piano, but once those parts were over, “she [ended] it completely by herself, in her own time.”

“It was actually the very last thing we recorded, because it doesn't require the full orchestra,” Wintory shared, continuing, “It was the most wonderful note to end on, to just have everyone in the orchestra just quietly listening to her play.”

Towerborne Broke Convention By Recording In Los Angeles

Microsoft & Formosa Interactive Made The Ambitious Goal Possible

One of Wintory’s highlights from working on Towerborne was the fact that he was able to record the score in Los Angeles. “We recorded this with a Hollywood orchestra, which is unheard of these days,” he said, adding, “I personally hadn’t recorded a game with a Hollywood orchestra since 2012.” The reason for this is that “There [are] a lot of considerations, and it’s not cheap.”

“The game industry had kind of summarily rejected recording in Los Angeles, which is why we go to London [or] Nashville.”

Wintory revealed his pitch to Microsoft for keeping things in his home city: “I went to Microsoft and I said, ‘We're trying to make a live service game where we want to continually add music, much in the same way that League of Legends, World of Warcraft, and lots of others are. If I'm developing a unique twist on the orchestra, I want to be able to go to the same exact people time and [time] again so we can have a real continuity of sound.’”

Wintory said, to Microsoft’s credit, that the response was, “‘Sure. If you want to record in LA, we’ll get behind that.’” “I have fought this battle a million times and lost every time,” Wintory added, continuing, “But Microsoft was willing to do it, which was astounding.” He also credited post-production company Formosa Interactive for “immense help” facilitating the recording.

Ultimately, Towerborne was recorded at the Warner Brothers scoring stage, which is “where all the Errol Flynn Robin Hood and The Sea Hawk and all these classic 1930s and ‘40s swashbuckler scores … which [Towerborne] is, very much, [were recorded.] The whole genre was essentially invented on the Warner Brothers scoring stage by Erich Wolfgang Korngold,” the composer said. Wintory has worked at the stage before, but “I never recorded a game there.” Wintory summed up his experience recording in LA quite well, although it’s easy to imagine he could have been speaking about working on Towerborne as a whole:

“It was an absolute joy and privilege.”

Towerborne is out for Xbox Series X/S and PC now.