Taking a Closer Look at Assassin's Creed's Action Music

I felt that my copy of the Assassin's Creed: Revelations soundtrack wasn't giving me quite enough insight in to how the series handles its action music, so I looked back on the other games in the series. Now, I've played all of the games save for the one that came out recently, but I've realized that one simply doesn't catch on to as many musical themes and ideas when playing the game, assuredly because one's mind is a bit preoccupied with controlling the character. I noticed that while there are structural similarities between the action music in the four Assassin's Creed games, each game also has a bit of its own "flavor," so to speak, and that is what I wish to talk about today.


Assassin's Creed
The original, very genre-(re)defining game from from 2007 is also very different, musically, from the other games. It's colder, harsher, and incredibly intense when compared with the music from later games in the series, and allow me to explain why.


Despite the flighty flutes and occasional bongo percussion, the instrumentation in this game is decidedly harsh, and rigid. Mostly, it's the anvils (and other hard metallic sounds) and low piano. These two things remind us of industry, of an unmovable force. The game is supposed to be about the freedom you have as an assassin, running through streets, jumping across rooftops, flying through the air, etc, but the music doesn't always seem to reflect this. The driving harshness of the piano and hard metal sounds are incredibly grounding, and no amount of fun, flighty flutes and bongos can offset this.


Also notice how incredibly dissonant and dark the music is, in terms of melody and chords. Close clusters, clashing notes. Even the production of the music is very compressed. It's all very suffocating. Is this intentional? I'm not really sure what I believe, but think about how dark the first Assassin's Creed is (spoilers ahead). You play as a lone assassin against a entire army of targets, and even your fellow assassins and master scorn and punish you for mistakes you make in the first chapter. The world is very unfriendly in the first Assassin's Creed, and when you step out of the animus, you're reminded that you're a prisoner being held against your will, and it's not clear what will happen to you once you've outlived your usefulness. It's a very depressing game, honestly, and the music seems to reflect that. Maybe intentionally, maybe not. The hard metal sounds and piano don't make a strong return to any of the later games, but the rest of the instrumentation (heavy drums, chanting, shakers, singing, strings) become part of the staple Assassin's Creed "run/fight" sound.


Assassin's Creed II
The second game in the series fixes all the issues from the first. It's definitely near the top of my list of "greatest games, ever" in terms of story, gameplay, and even ambience and music. The story makes you care about the character, it offers glimmers of hope, and the music really comes in to its own. Like I said before, each game has its own musical flavor, and Assassin's Creed II's soundtrack is all about the addition of a new instrument: the guitar, or instruments similar to the guitar, like the lute.


The music remains rather dark, but something about the constant strumming of the guitar/lute (whether you can make out what notes are being played isn't necessary) evens out the music, and makes it a lot "lighter" on its feet. The flutes and bongos couldn't accomplish this in ACI due to the overbearing weight of the pianos and heavy metallic sounds, which you can see also didn't make it in to the new soundtrack. The use of the lute gave the game its own unique style, and also lightly adhered to where and when the game took place, as the lute was very popular in Italy in the 14th century.


You'll notice the heavy drums have carried over from the previous game, along with the spooky distant voices and singing, the strings, and the shakers. ACII's soundtrack is interesting in that it occasionally uses distorted guitars and electronic drums, which is something you'd think wouldn't mix well with the time period you're playing in, but somehow it works very well.


Assassin's Creed Brotherhood
This is where the action and chase music truly begin to shine, in my opinion. The second game has quite a few gems, but the third game introduces something that is absolutely essential to AC's musical sound: weird sound effects used melodically, or musically.


Check out those crazy scraping noises! It's such a fantastic effect, and so incredibly unique. The distorted guitars are still there, but they are heavily toned down. For the most part, it's very similar to the previous game's soundtrack (heavy drums, shakers, strings, distant voices/singing, and guitar-like instruments) but the addition of the strange noise puts it in to unforgettable territory. I also love the exclusive use of the lute at 1:17. What's really neat, though, is that those scraping noises are coming from violins. Guess where the violin more or less evolved in to its modern form? Italy. Guess when? Around 1500. This plays in to my other observation about this game's chase and action music, the much heavier use of large string sections. ACII was all about mandolins, and guitar, and it all felt very "light" and "young." ACB seem much more mature, which is why I think it adopts a more broadly orchestral soundtrack. It's heavier, but still doesn't feel weighed down. Again, this fits because the 1500s in Europe were about the time classical string instruments really peaked. Today's string instruments really haven't changed that much since then, if you didn't know. Anyway, here's another great example of using sound effects, and more of the same instrumentation I've been mentioning this whole time:



Assassin's Creed Revelations
At this point, the game pretty much has a signature sound. There isn't much that's really added in ACR, it's just more of the same, but somehow it still remains pretty fresh. Even if it's rehashing old themes:


The bell motif should sound familiar, you just listened to it up top. But now it's mixed in with all the evolved ideas that make AC's music great. Here's another great example of strange sound effects used in a musical way, mixed in with the usual heavy drums, shakers, and strings.


If there is anything about ACR that gives it its own unique sound, I'd say it's the chord progressions and some of the melodies. They're much more memorable, and less stagnant. In my opinion, there's nothing wrong with chase music being stagnant (i.e. revolving around one note/chord), it's clearly been effective in the past. Perhaps the more outward expansion of the chords and melodies is Lorne Balfe's influence, as this is when he assisted in writing the soundtrack with Jesper Kyd. Maybe that's the very reason why Lorne was pulled in to work on ACR. Maybe Jesper's style had hit a peak, or to put it nicer, maybe he perfected it but the soundtrack still needed to evolve, to become more "epic," and epic isn't really Jesper's bag. I did mention in a previous post that Lorne also worked on Inception, which has a soundtrack that's just about as intense as they can possibly be. Anyway, here's one last video. It's one of my favorite tracks.


So you can see, each Assassin's Creed game has its own unique ideas. These ideas are mostly centered around instrumentation, and later around melody and chord progressions. But what of the overarching style that all these tracks use? The music is very texture-based. It's thin in some places, and it suddenly (or slowly) get heavier, busier. Then it suddenly drops down to just a few instruments. There's definitely a technique or special approach to writing this kind of music, and that is what I'll be talking about in my next update.

Alright, friends. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned later this week for some new music!