Finishing Move Explain Why Fans Will Love the Borderlands 3 Soundtrack
Less than three weeks now remain before the release of Borderlands 3 on the 13th of September, and the excitement among fans is practically palpable. Indeed, Gamescom attendees earlier this week voted Borderlands 3 the game that they “Most Wanted“! Borderlands 3 looks set to be the biggest and most explosive entry in the franchise yet, and Gearbox has been releasing trailer after trailer to promote the game as the release date draws closer. As a result, fans have gotten to hear just a few snippets of the Borderlands 3 soundtrack already. However, much of the score still remains under wraps…
Recently, we had the opportunity to speak with Brian Lee White and Brian Trifon, the composers known professionally as Finishing Move, Inc., who worked alongside Jesper Kyd, Michael McCann, and Raison Varner at Gearbox to compose the Borderlands 3 soundtrack!
Finishing Move and Their Work on the Borderlands 3 Soundtrack
For the benefit of those who may be unfamiliar with your work, how did you get started composing for video games, and could you tell me a bit about your past work leading up to Borderlands 3?
“While we grew up as gamers, we never actually set out to become ‘video game composers.’ When we started our careers, both of us wanted to make artist music and produce records. It was your typical “I wanna be a rockstar” route most teenage dudes who think they are good at guitar try and attempt. We eventually both found ourselves working for the same commercial music house, writing ad jingles, doing underscore for corporate videos, stuff like that. That’s when we first got the idea of teaming up to take on larger projects and break into something more ambitious.
“At that point, Trifon had built up a reputation with his electronic project Trifonic and had done some odds and ends on different game scores when the opportunity to work on the first Halo Anniversary came up with Paul Lipson. After that, the games thing just blew up from there. We went on to work on Halo 2: Anniversary and the Master Chief Collection, Halo Wars 2, Crackdown 3, and most recently Borderlands 3.”
Musically speaking, what would you say makes Borderlands 3 different from the previous instalments?
“There is just more of everything in Borderlands 3, including music. The game takes players to entirely new environments, where of course we wanted to showcase fresh and unique sounds while still maintaining the core Borderlands musical DNA. The cool thing about Borderlands as a franchise is the eclectic nature of the worlds and characters, which allows the score to branch out into so many different places. This allows us to explore sounds and textures beyond just a traditional scoring palette.”
Do you think the Borderlands 3 soundtrack will stand out more than the music of past games?
“Of course, we’d like to think so! The composition team on this game is so strong, in addition to us (Finishing Move, Inc.), you have Jesper Kyd, Michael McCann and Raison Varner from Gearbox. The musical muscle going into this score is so strong, the soundtrack is massive, and everyone is super proud of how it turned out. We think the fans are going to love it.”
With a game like Borderlands 3, where would you say you drew inspiration from for the music?
“We were fortunate enough to come in at a time when there were very playable builds of the game made available to us, this isn’t always the case on every game project we work on. So we were able to jump in right away and start experiencing the game from a player’s perspective, which is super helpful from a composition standpoint because we can start feeling what the player is going to feel during gameplay and begin thinking about how we might compliment that with music.
“We then worked closely with Raison Varner (Gearbox’s music director for Borderlands 3) on a general esthetic game plan for the music we were going to write, like what specific gameplay or character aspects did we want to play up or play down, and what types of sounds did we want to try and incorporate or even stay away from. From there, we started to develop sketches for the different maps and bosses we were assigned. Once we had a vibe that everyone felt good about, we’d break that music down into the digestible bits the interactive system feeds on, playtest that music, iterate, rinse and repeat.”
Did working on Borderlands 3 present any unique challenges (or indeed, opportunities) compared to working on your previous games like Halo Wars, Crackdown 3, etc.?
“The interactive music system in Borderlands 3 is entirely new and quite ambitious. The music system re-combines elements in real-time based on player and game inputs, so you are essentially getting a slightly different score every time you play. This highly generative aspect to the score required us to approach composing in entirely new ways. Traditionally, you might approach an interactive score with several looping segments of music that transition between each other, maybe with a few additional layers you could bring in dynamically for extra mileage. The Borderlands 3 system is much more granular than anything we’ve ever written for, requiring many smaller building blocks that can add together and make sense musically yet still sound exciting and evocative by themselves.”
Are you able to say roughly how long the Borderlands 3 soundtrack will be?
“Yeah, almost 6 hours, it’s insane, it’s Borderlands! There will also be a limited edition vinyl version that will feature selected tracks from each composer.”
Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, the last core title in the Borderlands series, released five years ago. With Borderlands 3, did you seek to give the score a more modern/new style, or be similar to the score from previous games?
“Borderlands has always featured multiple composers on its scores, so you are naturally going to hear those different voices coming through, which is a big part of what makes Borderlands music so great. With Borderlands 3, we wanted to honor that tradition by adding our unique voice to the canon while still respecting the core pillars that make the music work well. We think fans are going to hear things that are familiar but also stuff that is totally new and exciting, evolving the Borderlands sound into the next chapter.”
Obviously, Borderlands 3 is featuring whole new planets and environments which are new to the series – does the music play a role in helping these new areas feel distinct, and if so, can you tell us something about how they differ?
“Each planet and environment has its own musical DNA. We did a lot of work on the planet of Pandora, which is a desert planet. We wanted to incorporate sounds and textures that felt like the environment and made it distinct without being super on the nose, Spaghetti-Western style about it. Pandora is a pretty harsh and wild alien environment, so the idea was to capture this sort of pan-ethnic vibe that is both exotic yet still very gritty and visceral. You’ll hear a lot of rusty, scraping style sounds that highlight the decaying landscape combined with more eclectic world elements like Bulgarian choir and Turkish oud.”
How do you approach scoring a boss fight in Borderlands 3, compared to the other parts of the game?
“The boss battles are way more linear than the highly granular map music, so in this case, we could take more of a traditional scoring approach to writing the music. After writing for the map music, the battles were refreshingly simple; this is a badass boss, let’s write a high energy track with X number of looping phases to accompany the fight. We tried to capture the unique swagger and charm of each boss in their battle themes, scoring to gameplay capture as we worked.”
Are there any particular tracks which you wrote which you’re particularly happy with? (And perhaps which you’d recommend players to listen out for!)
“Check out the Calypso Twins’ music and the companion remixes we did for those tracks. We had a blast working on those.”
