Killzone 2 Soundtrack: Live Orchestral Performance

It was a last-minute virtue that Killzone 2 got its orchestral soundtrack. Written by original PS2 Killzone composer Joris de Man, here's a live recording of one of the game's pieces, Visari's Lament, played at Norrlans Operan in Umeå, Sweden.

Joris de Man told Edge-Online about the decision to get a live orchestra in for the soundtrack; a feature neither De Man nor Sony wanted to compromise.

Killzone 2's soundtrack was prearranged for recording in Prague, but the sessions were missed due to the game's cutscenes not being ready. De Man was regrettably prepared to settle for MIDI-based music, but then "Sony said that this was a triple-A title that needed a triple-A score, at which point we got [Nimrod Productions] involved, which has a lot of experience putting things like this together at the last hour."

De Man doesn't mince his words on the importance of a good video game soundtrack:

"For the cutscenes we anticipated that we would have a live orchestra, because you need that emotion. When you're working with animated characters, even if they look amazing, you'll still never quite get - even with Lucasfilm or Pixar - the same point where you can get the same emotion as what you can get with a live character. Because of that, the music needs to give an extra push to bring that across."

Therefore, Killzone 2's soundtrack was recorded in Studio One of Abbey Road Studios, with the Nimrod Studio Orchestra and conducted by Jon Williams.

The following video is a live-recording of a track from the end of the game, Visari's Lament, played at Norrlans Operan.