If Viking history is one side from the coin in Assassin's Creed Valhalla, then Norse mythology is the other. The game's latest expansion, Dawn of Ragnarok, embraces the second having a story featuring the Norse god Odin, and it has a new electric score by composer Stephanie Economou. This really is her second outing in the world of Assassin's Creed after The Siege of Paris, Valhalla's previous expansion. With Dawn of Ragnarok, Economou has broken away from the confines of historical fiction, and attempted soundtracking a mythical realm.
‘I really like exploring the different worlds of Assassin's Creed and conjuring up musical suggestions for these stories, so I was grateful to obtain another opportunity to collaborate with the Ubisoft team’, Economou told GamesHub.
‘A primary reason it is so rewarding to compose music for Assassin's Creed is that you have these historically-driven narratives, and the music can echo the sounds of this time yet still be hyper-modern and edgy and rule-breaking. It was cool to go from scoring The Siege of Paris DLC, that we composed through a largely historical musical lens, to some story like Ragnarok, that is based in Norse mythical worlds. In the case of Ragnarok, I felt I was in a position to discover a different side of me as a composer, which opened the doors to a new artistic process.’
Before her foray into composing for video games, Stephanie Economou spent years within the arena of film and TV, crafting memorable themes for shows like Jupiter's Legacy and The Chair. ‘Thus far in my career,’ she says, ‘I've composed music for superheroes, Disney warriors, surfing teenagers, hip-hop dancers, stranded astronauts, and Sandra Oh.’
‘I think Sandra Oh comes closest to embodying any type of god, so Odin felt such as the natural next step.’
Dawn of Ragnarok sees Odin journey towards the dwarven kingdom of Svartalfheim, facing served by foes of fire and frost, to rescue their son Baldur from the grips of an unkillable giant. To bring this journey and its action alive, Economou found herself tinkering with new sounds and new genres.
‘At the begining of discussions with the creative team, they mentioned wanting the sound for this score to be somewhat of a departure from Valhalla. The game developers were thinking about exploring influences of black metal for that score, that we thought would be a really exciting and unexpected challenge, and so i set out to design the sound of the Muspels, J
