In a little church tucked away in London’s bustling Shoreditch, Inon Zur sits to the side of the London Symphony Orchestra, grinning. He is watching them record 10 suites of music that he has composed and orchestrated for Starfield, Bethesda’s latest role-playing game. As the French horns blare out the game’s six-note main theme, his smile widens. His hands dance in front of him as he leans forward. He is air-conducting the way you or I might play air guitar to our favourite riff. For a moment he closes his eyes. Two members of the LSO see him in their periphery and smile into their instruments as they play.
“The French horn has always evoked the sound of a journey to me,” Zur tells me later. “There is something primordial about its quality, but on the other hand it can also be a very majestic instrument. It can be performed as a primitive call to battle or it can perform complicated melodies in a sophisticated manner.”
The soundtrack of Starfield is, to my ear, an instant classic. That horn theme permeates everything, insistent and hopeful and wary. It’s a cue for everything the player does; you hear echoes of it when you level up, when you jump from planet to planet, when you complete a mission, when you fall in love. It feels nostalgic the first time you hear it. It is, intentionally, at the heart of everything Starfield is.
“Music is one of the first things Bethesda starts on with a new project,” Zur tells me. Todd Howard, game director and executive producer for Bethesda Game Studios, brought Zur into the process early (a rare thing in game music), in 2016, and asked him to create concept music in the same way an artist would create concept art.
“Howard told me it was a project he was dreaming of for a long time,” says Zur, “and when he finally had the opportunity to pursue this vision, he wanted me to join the journey.” At that point, nothing was written. The kernel of Starfield was there – “the adventure, exploration, mystery and vastness of space” – but the finer details were obscured, like white noise in the cosmic microwave background.
“I went home to my studio and wrote 15-20 minutes of music inspired by our meeting, and sent these pieces to Bethesda,” says Zur. “They became the foundations for the soundtrack. They encapsulated some of the themes but, moreover, the harmonic treatment and signature for Starfield, and the combination of orchestral instruments and synths.”
The first themes Zur wrote were designed to establish the game’s signature sound. “The original theme did not survive,” he notes, “however, the three key chords that came right after announcing that theme ultimately became the sound of Starfield.” This chord progression became something of an anthem for the team at Bethesda Game Studios, and the whole score grew out of it. You can hear it in practically every suite in the LSO’s recording.
But why does the score feel so nostalgic, right away? Zur thinks it comes down to philosophy. “The contrast between the vastness of space and the human individual: that was the main drive for the score,” he explains. “The music conjures emotions to reflect the mystery and new revelations of infinite outer space. Composition-wise, through live symphonic movements and electronic music suites, I wanted to create a ‘Starfield musical universe’, with sonic shapes, harmonious and non-dissonant, that evoked a combination of human emotions: awe, excitement, fear and hope for the future. But most of all, curiosity of the unknown.”
Zur relies on a symbiosis of digital and organic sounds to achieve this. The classical symphonic palette, as he calls it, echoes “the grandeur and mystery of space”, while the organic electronic synth sounds represent “minimalist elements from the environment, to build the soundscape of this epic sci-fi adventure”. The result is something that evokes Star Wars, Star Trek, Blade Runner, or even Mass Effect. Zur explicitly references John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith and Vangelis.
“I found that the human ear strives to create its own feeling, so it is actually telling you a story that isn’t being told,” explains Zur. “This is what Starfield does, too: creating a massive universe but leaving spaces for the player to create their own adventure and narrative within the game’s overall story. I created different harmonies and melodies that are open-ended, but allow the listener to experience their own musical journey within.”
Starfield wants you to delve, to pluck, to investigate, to experiment. The “golden path” at the centre of the narrative is intentionally vague, because a guided experience is not the point. Dipping your hand into the game’s “Nasa-punk” toolbox and pulling out a mechanic, then seeing how it interacts with whatever task you’ve set yourself – that’s the fuel that gives this vast, sparse, curious universe its locomotion. There are a million narrative or situational hooks in Starfield, suspended weightless in space, waiting for you to fasten yourself to them. They’ll each tug you along somewhere new. Its obsession with discovery, with peregrination, runs parallel to Zur’s experience with it, too
“Starfield reflects more of my maturity as a composer,” he says simply. “Every time I found new motifs and developed their combinations, I realised I could reinterpret and craft them into the rhythmical language of the score. These were all highlights of the creative process for me. The whole journey was epic, emotionally and artistically. Every time I discovered something new, it was uncovering a new path that I had not visited before.”
Zur has been on record many times as saying that he believes music is the fourth dimension, “the emotional dimension”, in video games. Watching him lose himself in the music, carried on the French horns of that indefatigable main theme, you can see why. Starfield has sold itself for years as a project all about the romantic ideals of the journey, of humanity’s compulsion towards the unknown. Zur’s cautiously optimistic ode to the vastness of space embodies that – as does his enthusiastic curiosity in the face of an awesome challenge.
