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There’s little praise that I can heap on Astro Bot that I haven’t already. I had the opportunity to review the title, awarding it a perfect score of 10. It was my personal game of the year and, of course, also nabbed the top honour at last year’s The Game Awards. It’s up there, for me, as one of the greatest platformers of all-time. Astro Bot is a beautifully considered ode to PlayStation’s history, and yet one that also manages to look to the future; it challenged the PlayStation 5’s capabilities, creating an innovative new-gen experience packed with wow factor.
It’s with all of this in mind that there’s no one singular factor behind Astro Bot’s success. It’s a sum of its parts, and each of those parts were world class in terms of quality, from level design to 3D modelling, or special effects to sound design. One element of Astro Bot that proves particularly memorable though is its 87 song long soundtrack. While it’s perhaps ‘Crash Site’ or ‘I Am Astro Bot’ that you’re most likely to find yourself humming, the entire score played a pivotal role in transporting players from tropical climes to snowy tundras and everything in between.
In fact, that feeling is soon set to be amplified with Astro Bot’s score confirmed to feature in the upcoming PlayStation The Concert - World Tour. The state-of-the-art live music production will bring fans’ favourite gaming soundtracks to life, accompanied by “cutting-edge visuals”. It’ll kick off next month in Dublin, before travelling around Europe, the US, and beyond. Ahead of the tour, I had the opportunity to sit down with the incredibly talented Kenneth C M Young, the composer behind the Astro Bot soundtrack, to chat about the ongoing pinch-me experience that is being a part of this monumental game.
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You can view the trailer for PlayStation The Concert - World Tour below.
Astro Bot is, I imagine, the type of game that demands a lot of its composer for several reasons; perhaps namely because it’s so varied in its setting and the mood it seeks to create. I was eager to hear whether, for Kenny, that was something he looked upon as a challenge or treat.
“I think it's both,” Kenny mused. “The plus side is that variety is the spice of life, particularly when you’re working on a big project. Having all of these different things to do keeps it fresh. The other side, and this could be a positive, is that it does stretch you. If I am a specialist in anything, it would probably be folk music just because that’s part of my musical heritage, and we really had the chance to sort of turn that up to 11 [...] but there’s a crazy variety of influences.”
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“I think that’s why people have been so impressed by the project; it’s a real smorgasbord. That creates the requirement for me to try and keep up with the development team but the challenge isn’t just the range, it’s trying to give [the score] a consistent voice whilst also being diverse. It’s largely electronic in nature. I’ve got a penchant for singing robots so any excuse to get that kind of vocalisation in, I will, but hopefully that fun translates to a fun experience for the audience.”
All of this left me wondering what the starting point for a particular level might be. I was keen to find out from Kenny whether, say, pacing or mood is an initial focus or whether the experience of scoring a level is always a holistic one.
“We do have to be holistic, for sure,” he told me. “There are two aspects to it. There’s the game direction side of things, including pacing. Nicolas [Doucet, game director] always had loads to say in that regard, explaining, ‘This is where the mechanic becomes more full-on’, or ‘This is where we want to drive the player forward’. That impacts tempo and intensity, and then there’s the creative direction side of things. Where are we? What’s the setting and what can I take from that that I can use in the music?”
“I really like having a concept to play with,” he continued. “It’s nice to take something from it that can inspire me because I think that’s the hardest part of the creative process but once you’ve started, the process sort of runs itself.”
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Of course, in a game like Astro Bot that’s without dialogue, the score holds a lot of the emotional weight of the story - and any one who’s reached the end of the game, which I won’t spoil, will know that it packs a surprising punch.
“I wouldn’t say I felt extra pressure from that. If anything, it's a bit of a gift,” Kenny explained. “There's not really any narrative to speak of; it’s the animation that adds loads of character, and that always inspires me the most, seeing what the little bots are up to. That just means that there's more room for the music to capture people's attention. It would be unfair to call it a blank canvas because the music is still a supporting feature, but it’s a gift to indulge in creating these catchy earworms.”
Astro Bot is a game that, in my opinion, honours the platformers that came before it whilst still being both unique and innovative itself - something Kenny was conscious of whilst creating the soundtrack.
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“Nicolas was careful to try and not get too close to any other well known IPs in the genre,” he said. “We’re trying to make a unique experience for people. [...] For them to hear something and think, ‘Oh that’s Astro Bot’. That’s why when I identify an aspect of the music that I feel like hasn’t been done anywhere else, I really dial it up. There’s the robot vocalisation, the 90s sampling esthetics which, you know, that’s not necessarily cool but it’s something I’m passionate about. And if you can find ways to pour your passion into your work, it translates to a unique experience where you can help build a strong brand for the project.”
That being said, there are occasions in Astro Bot where it was necessary for Kenny to consider other IPs. I don’t think any of us are going to forget those epic themed levels anytime soon, from ‘Bot of War’ to ‘Dude Raiding’.
“That was the highlight of the project,” Kenny confessed. “It was a worry up front because, you know, that's quite a daunting task to try and strike that balance between referencing the original and kind of making it feel like Astro Bot. The first one I did was ‘Bot of War’ and as a result of that being first, there was probably a bit more experimentation there.”
“But fundamentally, the process of working and creating those bits of music was actually pretty similar to my general process. [...] It's just a case of finding ways to be creative and have fun with that source material. You want these PlayStation first-party musical themes to be recognisable but then I need to put my own little twist on them. I’d juxtapose my own melodies against the originals, and just mash them up and have fun.”
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“There’s the ‘boy’ drop in the ‘Bot of War’ track,” he continued. “I remember mentioning it to Nicolas because I hadn’t added it at that point. I said I was thinking about it and he said, ‘Yeah, do that’. It felt so cheesy. I thought I couldn’t possibly do that but then again, that’s why you have a trusted collaborator and someone you can bounce ideas off of.”
It’s honestly one of my personal favourite facets of the soundtrack, and judging by the response to the track when it landed on social media after launch, I don't think I’m alone in saying that.
I, like so many others, enjoyed Astro Bot in the comfort of my own home, but Kenny’s soundtrack will soon be heard in arenas across the globe when PlayStation The Concert gets underway. I was curious to learn whether it ever crossed Kenny’s mind that the music could, one day, be played in venues of this capacity.
“No, that’s not the gig. You’re just focused on trying to create the best possible player experience,” he told me. “But, of course, music's got this amazing ability for people to enjoy it outside of the games. The concerts just create an opportunity for people to take that love of game music and experience it live with, you know, amazing world class performers just hopefully sending shivers up people's spine.”
“The music is meticulously recorded when it’s presented in a soundtrack album. But there’s something very special about it being done live. That combined with the special sort of emotional feelings we all have for these IPs, it’s going to be so amazing.”
Kenny did get a snippet of what the event might feel like at last year’s The Game Awards where, as a Game of the Year nominee, Astro Bot’s soundtrack was included in the evening’s annual orchestral mash-up performance.
“With Pedro [Eustache] the flute guy playing too,” Kenny recalled, a very popular fixture of The Game Awards Orchestra.
“I was there for the performance, and it was such a great show and to have that at the end … I knew it was coming but yeah, I definitely shed a little tear because it was just pretty overwhelming. Someone made an edit on YouTube just looping the Astro Bot segment and it’s very cool to know there are people out there watching that, cheering it on, and enjoying it.”
Something I remarked on in my original review is that, to me, Astro Bot is far beyond 2024’s best game. I truly believe it's a seminal release. In the future, it’s a title that I think we’ll look back on as being defining of the PlayStation 5 era - and I’m sure Astro is going to play a major role as a mascot for the PlayStation brand in the coming years.
Naturally, Kenny could never have predicted this success, but I was keen to learn whether he’d had time to reflect on the magnitude of being a part of this incredible release.
“It’s mad to look at how it’s blown up,” he said. “But when you’re working, you’re just trying to do your best work. That’s all anyone is trying to do when they're making a game. I just feel incredibly lucky to have had, looking back, the opportunity to work on something like Astro’s Playroom [for which Kenny also composed the soundtrack] which is pre-installed on every PlayStation 5. It doesn’t matter who you are, how good you are, that’s not an opportunity that anyone’s ever going to get. I just feel so lucky to be the person getting that gig. I just pinch myself really. You can’t plan for these things but it’s really cool.”
With my time with Kenny drawing to a close, I thought I’d ask what his personal favourite tune from the soundtrack was. I shared that mine was ‘Crash Site’ perhaps just because I spent so much time in the game’s hub that, to me, it holds a warm familiarity.
“That was the first track I wrote for the game,” Kenny told me. “Because Nic always likes to start with the hardest stuff. I think my personal favorite is probably the casino track [‘Casino (No Guarantino)’]. One of the things I was trying to do there was, and it’s probably the closest I’ve got, was to create a sort of 1960s or 70s library music sound. I’m not really a jazz writer by any stretch of the imagination so that’s me sort of stretching myself to do something like that. And, again, another great excuse to write a little mini song with some singing robots in there.”
PlayStation The Concert - World Tour will have its world premiere on 19 April in Dublin, Ireland, before heading to more than 200 cities. Full details regarding tickets and shows can be found on the tour’s official website.
Topics: Interview, PlayStation, PlayStation 5, Sony