Danny Elfman Contributes to Fable Soundtrack

[Mairu]

February 18, 2004—Microsoft Game Studios announced today that music celebrity Danny Elfman has composed the theme for the upcoming Xbox roleplaying adventure Fable™.

Elfman, three-time Academy Award® nominee and front man for the eighties new-wave band Oingo Boingo, is best known for his unique musical style. Movie-goers have heard his work in the soundtracks of dozens of popular films, including Chicago, Batman, Spider-Man, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Beetlejuice. For Fable, Elfman’s first foray into the world of videogame soundtracks, he worked with a hand-picked orchestra and recording team to produce a magical theme in full 5.1 Surround Sound.

In Fable, the groundbreaking roleplaying adventure from game designer Peter Molyneux, players’ actions determine their characters' skills, appearances, and moralities. Characters' life stories are created from childhood to death. They can grow from inexperienced children into the most powerful beings in the world, choosing the path of righteousness or dedicating their lives to evil.

Muscles expand with each feat of strength. Force of will increases with each work of wit. Obesity follows gluttony. Skin tans with exposure to sunlight and bleaches bone-white by moonlight. Players earn scars in battle and lines of experience with age. With each person they aid and every creature they slay, they change the world forever. In Fable, gamers decide: “Who will I be?”

Awesome. I was starting to lose interest in the game from the latest screenshots too, can't wait to hear the music now.

[bahn]

Agreed. He's an excellent composer.

...Jeez, how could that press release forget to mention that he's also responsible for writing the score for The Simpsons?

[Green]

That's pretty cool.

[Jeremy]

Actually, he wrote the theme to "the Simpsons", Alf Clausen did most of the show's actually composing during the early years, and another guy, whose name escapes me, does the stuff now.

[BioMechanic]

As awesome as Boingo is/was, I would never have guessed in 1987 that Danny Elfman would become such a respected and successful composer. An amazing transition.

He voiced Jack Skellington, didn't he?

[g0zen]

According to IMDB, Elfman voiced all of Skellington's singing parts while Chris Sarandon did the speaking.

[Six]

Interesting. Elfman does an awesome job with his scores and here's hoping that he does equally well with the game soundtrack. Maybe this will help widen the acceptance of this type of composition (game soundtrack) in the general public, you know, since it's not all bleeps and bloops now. Well, mostly.

[animegirl]

Man, this game just sounds better and better...

[frostwolf ex]

was already planning on getting it, but now its even better.

[SonofdonCD]

This is pretty awesome. This is much like Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, which will have the main theme composed by Lalo Schiffrin, the man who did the Mission Impossible theme. Or MGS2 which had Harry Gregory-Williams re-arrange the original theme (he worked on Armageddon and The Rock). I think he also did the theme for MGS3: Snake Eater, but I'm not sure.

I do hope that when these and other film composers are in their off-time between scoring films, they consider contributing to game scoring. It's much the same thing, really.