Far away on the fringes of the Frontier, Even Like This appears in the Apex Legends universe, an iconic battle royale game developed by Respawn Entertainment. As ELT’s first spec project and game audio case, we designed an entire music pack for the game, based on an original soundtrack by Stephen Barton. We integrated our music to the original gameplay, so buckle up, and enjoy your flight to the borderlands.

Since 66% of ELT team have played Apex Legends for a while, this artwork became more than just another project for us. To get a better match with the original vibe of the game, we started our sonic construction using the signature mnemonic melody of Apex Legends:

As a continuously emerging and self-revealing universe, Apex Legends presented every new season with a completely different soundtrack. Even though the key feature of all Apex music is a classic cinematic soundscape with signature guitar tones, each season could be sounding like a chilling science fiction story, a cinematic ballad dedicated to ‘ye olde good days, or even like a raving ommage to the techno culture.    We decided to discover the ever-evolving potential of electronic game audio, turning the story to a more murky key full of completely new timbres. So, our next essential task was to build an organic asset of sounds, which would match seamlessly with Apex’s sonic world.    To do this, we combined the ultimate power of digital synthesis with raw analog sounds:

The next step is befriending cinematic instruments, like orchestral drums and strings, with the asset above. By recreating the original Apex Legends signature synth, we could successfully set up the foundation of the soundtrack’s sustainability inside the Apex universe.

After that, we could tone down a bit and use this powerful synergy in lobby music. This is the most measured part of our soundtrack and still the most important one as it becomes the “glue” of the whole composition, that ties all the incarnations together. Also, as a mezzo-forte asset of sounds, lobby music might be a great pivot point for further development of a music pack for any game.

Get ready. As the rhythm gets quicker and the bass becomes filthy, you are free to pick your favorite hero to step into the maelstrom of battle. Cinematic moods meet the ruthlessness of modular synthesisers – so that you don’t forget: there can be only one winner!

Of course, nobody can win all the time – there should be a way to learn from your losses.

But if you do, you know for sure that a reward of a champion tastes like nothing else. The top-1 mini-track triumphantly closes the constellation of our sounds for Apex.

Stay tuned to listen to the forthcoming case studies from Even Like This.