Gerard Marino as you may or may not know is the composer for God Of War 1,2 and Chains of Olympus. He has been known for his work with several other games too such as Fantastic 4, The Punisher and many more. He has won several awards, one being the Game Audio Network Guild’s Music Of The Year Award. Music4Games has had the privilage of interviewing the composer and has asked him a few questions.
Music4Games Reports:
"M4G: We’re here with Gerard Marino, lead composer for God of War, God of War II, and God of War: Chains of Olympus. Are there other games that you want to mention?
Gerard Marino: Yeah, I wrote all the cinematic music for 187: Ride or Die, additional music for The Punisher, and was one of the orchestrators for Medal of Honor: Rising Sun.
M4G: So there’s the list of credits. We’re going to talk about the God of War: Chains of Olympus score, which you are solely responsible for all the new music in this title. Tell us about the direction for the score of God of War: Chains of Olympus. It is the first title in the series for a portable system, so give us an overview of your approach and how it may have differed with the console iterations?
Gerard Marino: Well, it didn’t differ too much in that it’s still about Kratos, and he’s POed, and he’s on a mission from the gods to kill a bunch of people and things, so there wasn’t a whole lot of deviation. What deviation there was though, is that one of the characters he meets is a little bit lighter in scope than most of the other characters. So there’s actually some music in here that is a little bit lighter than what you’ve heard in previous God of War titles.
M4G: So that was the only difference. I guess with handhelds you think of short, on-the-go spurts of play. So was there any sort of track length limitation or anything that went along those lines?
Gerard Marino: Not really. Actually, I got to play the game for the first time today down at the Sony booth, and it’s like you’re playing God of War on a smaller screen. It doesn’t sound or feel or act at all different.
M4G: So maybe it’s God of War on the small screen, but not on the scale of the game and the music?
Gerard Marino: Well, I know the first time I went down to meet the guys at [Ready at Dawn Studios] to talk about things, Ru Weerasuriya, the creative director, was just as enthusiastic as anyone could be. It was like he was launching the PS3 the way he cared about this game, and everybody down there was obviously gong to treat it like it was a AAA title on the newest console. Ru even wrote into the script his desire for a particular musical theme, and calls attention to it during gameplay. A composer’s dream! They milked the PSP for everything it could do. I think anybody who’s going to play it is going to be very, very surprised about how good it looks, how close to the original that it plays. It looks like it and it feels like it. The sound, I’ve only heard it on small speakers, but I believe the sound is on the same par. The only limitation on the PSP is the track count allotted to music. The quality itself is just as good. I think you can plug it into the stereo and not notice the sound quality difference between the PSP and the PS2 titles."
For the full interview visit our source site below!
Source: Music4Games
