NME recently caught up with Riot Games to learn how Teamfight Tactics‘ musical Remix Rumble update came to life.
Launched last week (November 21), Remix Rumble is a Teamfight Tactics (TFT) set that tasks players with building teams of music-themed fighters from the world of League Of Legends.
As part of the mode, several Riot Games bands – such as K-pop group K/DA, metal band Pentakill, and boy band Heartsteel – make an appearance, along with new acts that range from emo to country. As players recruit more units in these genres, TFT‘s soundtrack changes to reflect the most-used group, and each genre can be remixed with another.
“Before we wrote a single note of music, we needed to figure out if it could even work,” Kole Hicks, lead composer at Riot, told NME. “Can you change the tempo of certain things and make it all match? Even if it works, does it actually sound good?”
Hicks originally tested the game mode by sampling existing K/DA and True Damage songs, but found they lost too much of their identity when they were chopped up too much. Instead, the music team composed original tracks to get to the “essence” of each genre in Remix Rumble – but even then, trying to make each one sound distinct was a challenge.
“There were some genres that are so similar to each other traditionally,” explained sound design manager Alison Ho. “One of the ones we talked a lot about were emo and country. Emo by itself sounds traditionally very close to punk and metal. When you really break that down, it’s not going to feel as interesting because it sounds so similar.”
“When you first think of emo, you [think of] My Chemical Romance, or Fugazi, all that kind of stuff,” Ho added. “It was really fun to go down those paths and find where we could take this […] We made it sound more traditionally gothic, with like harpsichords and organs, for a Wednesday-esque feel to it.”
“It’s not 100 per cent what you would find in the genre,” added Hicks, “but with two different songs, two different keys, there’s a good chance it’s going to work in combination with other elements really well and bring enough variety between the two.”
Elsewhere, creating a visual identity for each genre in Teamfight Tactics was a challenge that art director Sebastian Reeve had to tackle. “We worked most of the year trying to figure out what that style, that look, was,” he shared.
“We were inspired by musical shows, which are all about lights and having really other-worldly, fantastic settings,” said Reeve, who took particular inspiration from shows by producer and DJ Flying Lotus. “Musical concerts try and transport you to a completely different world – you’re not looking at the stage anymore, you’re intimately connected with the artists and immersed in the sound.”
For anyone who hasn’t had a chance to check Remix Rumble out just yet, Riot recently released an official music video for the set featuring a remix by Steve Aoki – you can check it out here.