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What can you tell us about implementing an orchestration into the game? Is it similar to the MIDI? Are you implementing all the individual instruments and the game mixes it live, or how does that work?

TL;DRLive orchestral recordings don't suit the modular block system, so they'll be saved as whole pieces and triggered rarely for special moments, such as a first visit to a planet.

Ross TregenzaSenior Sound Designer, Foundry 42 UK

It's difficult because there are certain restrictions, obviously, with recordings of a real orchestra versus MIDI. There's the human element, which is what you want from a real orchestra, all that detail and human input. If you want to break things into blocks for that music logic system we were talking about earlier, sometimes that doesn't really work, because it needs to be so regimented and so machine-like for those blocks. So really what you want to do with these kinds of beautiful tracks, like Pedro's been writing, is save them to be enjoyed as one long piece. So these will be used in those sort of breathtaking, show-stopping moments in the game, where we'll make sure that they're triggered very, very rarely, when the right conditions happen. Say maybe it's your first visit to a planet and one of his beautiful, heart-wrenching melodies will come in, and where it has been a bit more modular and machine-like before, suddenly it becomes super emotive and human. So it's about making sure the conditions are right to go bam and drop one of these Pedro bombs on people.

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