![song at the beginning of borderlands 2 song at the beginning of borderlands 2](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81F-Z5MLW9L._SL1324_.jpg)
“In my mind, Borderlands has always been served best by emphasising novelty and variation.” Borderlands 3 doubled down on that with distinct planets, so there was more variety between composers and within each composer’s output
#SONG AT THE BEGINNING OF BORDERLANDS 2 SERIES#
Much of our scoring was environment-driven, so the music naturally became more varied later in the series - for instance Borderlands 2 has lush greenery, cold winter landscapes, and so on. “It was mostly all Badlands, so that had a unifying effect on the different composers. “ Borderlands offered the least diversity of environments of the games” says Varner. Listen along - Borderlands series OST highlights: Spotify playlist | Apple Music playlistĬomposer team: Jesper Kyd, Cris Velasco, Sascha Dikiciyan, Raison Varner and Tim Larkin Varner kindly picked out and commented on some of his favourite and/or most significant cues from across the series. In Borderlands 2, the player fights a giant snowman… tacky is kind of part of the experience at that point, so we embraced it fully. That said, there are moments when doing something funny with the music serves the game well, but these are usually within seasonal DLCs. We’ve often resisted requests to have the music emphasise a punchline. “If we’re too on-the-nose in terms of jokey tone - ?BA-DUM-TISSSHHHH? - much of the magic and edge of Borderlands disappears, and what remains is a monstrosity of tackiness. The soundtrack supplies energy, aggression, beauty, and wildness. Varner agrees: “We’ve always emphasised that, while Borderlands is comedic in terms of dialogue, story, characters, and sometimes even locations, the music isn’t. ”īorderlands is known for having lots of guns and lots of jokes, but the music itself isn’t supposed to be ‘funny’. It was a conscious move to help Borderlands feel like it was on the cutting edge of music evolution, and it complemented our guerrilla mindset. Varner comments: “Electronic music has become a series staple. If you’ve been listening closely enough, you’ll know that Borderlands soundtracks are stuffed with kick-ass electronic music, alongside other genres. I’ve always felt it was important to not try to sound like the last game, and our future Borderlands 3 DLCs will stretch that even further.” “I’ve been lucky that, as a franchise, Borderlands is so whacky and the team so open to experimentation that I haven’t had to struggle with boundaries or issues of legacy that you might face working on other series. He has also composed significant chunks of the series soundtracks. He created the ‘sound’ of the iconic character Claptrap and initially shared dialogue writing duties. He has played a fundamental role in the ‘shlooter’ series ever since, becoming audio lead on all of the ‘numbered’ entries. In 2008, Varner joined Gearbox part-way through Borderlands development, after stints at Volition and Human Head studios doing both sound design and composition. “It settled the ‘which is better: films or video games?’ debate I was having with myself, especially when I imported the live orchestra album Another killer orchestral soundtrack from that time is 1993’s Dark Wizard on SEGA CD - one of my favourites to this day.” Varner: for the young video games-loving musician, Nobuo Uematsu’s landmark score for 1994’s Final Fantasy VI was a pivotal moment. You can buy Borderlands soundtrack vinyl and find digital links at Ī quick bit of background on Mr. Who better to help guide us through some of those highlights than Gearbox composer and senior sound designer (as well as Borderlands 3’s Music Director) Raison Varner ? There are plenty of Claptastic gems among the 250+ (and counting) Borderlands music tracks now available on Spotify et al.
![song at the beginning of borderlands 2 song at the beginning of borderlands 2](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/SzZ8YtuiVD4/maxresdefault.jpg)
#SONG AT THE BEGINNING OF BORDERLANDS 2 SOFTWARE#
We were extremely proud to work with Gearbox Software on bringing music from the Borderlands series to digital platforms - you can find all the album links near the bottom of the article - but there’s no denying that there’s A LOT of it. Also, some might feel put-off by a massive 50+ tracklist of cues of varying lengths and listenability while others delight in digging through that much music for gems. There’s an inherent tension with game soundtrack albums : completionists want everything they can get their hands on, whereas more selective types prefer a curated selection for a better standalone listening experience. We picked the brain of Borderlands 3 music director and composer Raison Varner to learn more about the music of the rootin’-tootin’, shootin’ & lootin’ video game series.