Hello Games’ Paul Weir spaces out with the No Man’s Sky: Cosmos EP
The infinite universe video game received an expansive 10th anniversary update, with the long-time audio director and co-composer adding music cues.
The No Man’s Sky: Cosmos EP is now streaming and downloadable on music services:
What about the Cosmos update necessitated new tracks?
Paul Weir: “Cosmos explores the wonders of space with new spectacular, bizarre, dangerous and beautiful deep space marvels. No Man’s Sky is an ideal game to write music for: it’s as much an experience as a game, providing so much scope to experiment with musical ideas to fit the atmosphere. The feeling of floating in deep space whilst visiting a derelict spaceship, flying towards the sun or visiting an ice asteroid belt are all rich opportunities to spark musical ideas.”
What’s the experience of composing for the game 10 years after launch?
Paul Weir: “I would never try to write music like 65daysofstatic’s original tracks, which is actually helpful since it encourages new ideas and fresh approaches. We don’t have any central themes so it’s very much about what music would best enhance each particular situation. The indie game studio approach also extends to the music, we’re not trying to create the most highly polished, perfectly constructed pieces of music, instead I feel totally free to play, experiment and have fun coming up with different ideas as long as they also have the right kind of hard-to-define No Man’s Sky feeling.”
Do you have any personal musical touchpoints for sci-fi synth music?
Paul Weir: “At the back of mind for these tracks was the 1977 album Spiral by Vangelis. Just the memory of it rather than anything more specific, but he did love his Yamaha CS-80 arpeggios. There’s something irresistible about synth arpeggios slowly morphing over time with some lovely swelling pads on top. And there’s always Eno’s Apollo with its perfectly captured moments of tranquility amongst the stars.”
Are there any music details or easter eggs that you’d like to bring to the attention of fans of the game and other listeners?
Paul Weir: “Travelling to the sun is peak No Man’s Sky. The player has nothing to do for the ten minutes or so it takes to reach the star; few games would include that as a feature! That simple idea is instantly a perfect place to start to write a piece of music.”
Paul Weir is Audio Director, Sound Designer, Composer & Voice Director at Hello Games - hellogames.org | Spotify