Chris Connor chats with composer Gordy Haab about Indiana Jones and the Great Circle…
One of the pleasant surprises in 2024 gaming wise has been the response to Indiana Jones and The Great Circle. It is a globe trotting game that takes place between Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade. John Williams’ themes are iconic and Gordy Haab’s score is one of the key components that makes the game really soar.
We had the pleasure of discussing Haab’s approach to the franchise after his started his career on the last Indiana Jones game in 2009. He talked about stepping into William’s shoes and lessons learned from the Jedi Survivor game series.
What were your first steps when you when you got on board with this project?
So for me my first steps on this was to sort dig back into my roots. Because, you know, rewind about almost 20 years, my very first video game project was also Indiana Jones. It was a game called The Staff of Kings and so for me, like the even just the idea of of getting to kind of jump back into that franchise was was very revealing. So I wanted to dig back into the roots that I sort of established back then on that game in the hope that I would be able to revisit franchise and kind of come full circle in so many ways with what I had started all those many years ago. And fast forward through now what I guess is somewhat of a storied career in game music, now I get to revisit this franchise that I love so much. So my first steps were really just to kind of dig into what makes Indiana Jones, dig into the character themes and really understand the story as much as I could. I read early draft scripts and that kind of thing so I could start to develop sort of a language for it.
The music for this franchise is so iconic because of John Williams. How do you find balancing those motifs and themes that are so recognisable with your with your own sounds?
So the approach that I took with this is similar to the approach that I took when working on the Star Wars franchise, with the Jedi series in particular, if you look at the music that that I wrote with Stephen Barton on Jedi Survivor, there’s eight hours of music, and there’s about two minutes of that eight hours that include the Force Theme, for example. The reason we chose to do that is the same reason of how I approached using the iconic themes from Indiana Jones in this game, which is that if you use it too much, it feels like you’re using it as a crutch. You’re leaning on it to constantly remind the audience that this is Indiana Jones, you know.
So I wanted to avoid that. I wanted to use the theme in subtle ways, only when it was very important to sort of use it, like the most iconic sort of moments in the game, where it really just sort of called for that legacy theme. So, even in those cases, I’m always trying to fold it in subtly with with what’s original. As fan of the franchise myself, I’m always trying to imagine what I would hope another composer would do, and what my expectations as a fan would be, which is, I want to hear something new. I want to hear something original, and it needs to fit this new, original story. If we were sort of repeating what we all know already, I think that that would sort of detract. In this case, I made sure that it was a wholly original score, just weaving that theme in in its most important moments, so that it really felt as though when you hear that theme, it’s extremely important and calls attention to itself.
You mentioned this being original story although it takes place between the films in 1937. How did you find that?
It’s 1937, it’s right in-between, Raiders and The Last Crusade. That only came into play really like the timeline itself a few occasions in the score. Mostly, I wanted to make sure that the music I was running served the actual storyline that we have in this game, which is very unique in many ways. You know, the Great Circle, this concept of all these points around the globe that if you connect them all, you know, sort of unlocks this magic sort of power. So each of those little points along the globe have their own sort of tone, and that’s what I think makes Indiana Jones so unique, this idea of sort of globe-trotting, and you get various styles of music based on the region you’re in. So I wanted to lean into that quite a bit.
We also have new characters in this story that are not in any of the films, so they of course needed to have their own thematic material as well. The approach with how I’ve woven those themes in and out of each other is very much sort of in the tradition of how John Williams would have done so in the original score, so they’re all kind of playing off of each other at all times. It just kind of gives it some depth, if you will.
You’ve mentioned it’s a globetrotting adventure covering several continents Did you have any favourite locations to score?
You know, that’s a good point. I mean, honestly, the very opening sequence in Peru, which I think was sort of in many ways the most fun, because I got to dig into what made me really love the franchise as a kid. You know, the first film I saw was Raiders when I was quite young, and it was very impactful. It definitely left a stamp on my musical knowledge. I always thought it was so unique how he use these bound percussion sounds to kind of create this environment. So I kind of wanted to lean into that a bit. That gave me a launching pad for the rest of the score, and once I kind of dug into that sort of musical language, it sort of guided how I would approach other environments as well.
What I think I’ve enjoyed writing the most in this game was the actual theme for the Great Circle itself, because it’s unique in that I wrote it just from reading early draft of the script. So just understanding the concept of the Great Circle, the theme itself actually follows that same concept. So it’s just individual notes that move around sort of a circle, cycle up through the entire sort of musical chromatic scale and repeats itself seamlessly back to the top, so that you can start it at any point in that sequence of notes, and it will always sort of repeat itself. So it actually creates this sort of musical circle. So that was kind of a cool nerdy kind of way to approach writing a theme for the Great Circle. I thought that was a lot of fun.
How did you find the size of the game with the different locations, did you find that was a challenge to compose music to suit all the locations?
It certainly was a challenge because there’s lots of different musical styles that the score runs through based on environments and, of course, also based on the sort of emotional content of a moment. That’s that’s a very vast task to take on. The fortunate thing was with games, as opposed to film, which I’ve also worked quite a bit in, is the schedule. With games, you have quite a lot of time,which makes it sort of luxurious. In many ways, I’m able to fail and try again and fail and try again until I’m happy with the content that I’m delivering. Often I’ll send version 10 of something. I’ll write multiple versions and not be happy with it myself until, you know, finally land on something I like, and then I’ll send it. I think that’s a luxury that you really only have in games, because I have been working on this game for about three years, so, there’s quite a lot of music in it. I had quite a bit of time also to sort of perfect it and get it to where I really was happy with it.
You’ve touched on your work in Star Wars as well, and the Jedi Survivor games. Did you feel there were lessons you learned there that helped feed into this, in terms of doing a game of this scale especially?
Absolutely. So, if I was to rewind back to when I did my first game, which is the Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings game. I look back on that and I think, man, I was so nervous. I didn’t know what I was doing. It was new to me. The idea of jumping into a franchise that’s so beloved by so many people was very daunting. Now fast forward almost 20 years later and I’ve scored multiple games for Star Wars, and I’ve become very used to knowing that there’s a built in fan base that I’m writing to, and trying to please. Along that line the biggest lesson I’ve learned is that I, too, am a part of that fan base. So I always try to approach what I’m writing as I want to write what I would hope another composer would write as a fan myself. What would I want to hear from another composer? So that’s always been my approach when working in existing franchises. As a fan myself, how would I want to hear this score come out? So that lesson really helped me dive into this. I definitely felt a bit more confident having been down this road quite a few times before. So that took away a bit of the nerves and allowed me just to be creative and free to write whatever I felt worked best,
One of the things about this game and other titles like Uncharted and Lara Croft is the balance of puzzles and the action sequences. How do you find balancing those?
Yeah, it was very interesting, because this game is not just, you know, constant combat and it’s very improvisatory, even when, when there is combat, you know, like you can pick up literally anything and say there’s a weapon. I’ve been having fun playing the game. It’s like, you know, I was fighting off enemies with a broom. That’s just really fun to me. So, like, right away, I just kind of dove into the combat systems and tried to make it interactive in a way that felt like Indiana Jones. We even have music that has overlays of punch effects, you know. So when you’re fighting if you think of the original scores, it’s like the music hits those moments, those big punches, there would be a big you swell in the music. So I tried to design a music system that would accentuate those kinds of things.
Then with the puzzle play, it was always more about of being stealthy and trying to stay out of the way allow the player to sort of solve the puzzle without getting in the way of that thought process, but still create atmosphere and environment. That was the key there just to keep the atmosphere going so the player is always kind of immersed in the experience, but without getting in the way of the challenge of solving.
Did you have any other areas of the score you wanted to especially focus on?
Just a huge thank you to all of the musicians that brought this to life. I think a lot of times players play the games and they hear the music, and some may even think music from the original Indiana Jones films, but that’s not the case at all here, and we have some brand new themes and new characters and a great new story that needed his own unique score and to bring that to life, we had somewhere in the ballpark of 300 musicians around the world that brought this to life. So just a huge thank you to all of them, all of the musicians in London who brought this to life, and the crew at Abbey Road Studios, also the orchestra in Vienna and the sync run stage recording studio, such an amazing crew. We even had this really exciting opportunity to sort of dig back into my own personal roots, because I grew up as a jazz musician, to write some old time, 1930s music.
We recorded that with a big band in Nashville, and they just absolutely nailed it. I literally did it also with two microphones in the room, and all the band were playing together. All seeing the music for the first time. We did get one take on each one. That’s how it would have been done in the 30s. So I thought that would be like kind of a fun way to to pay homage to that.
How was recording at Abbey Road with the game and film lineage it has?
Recording there is, it’s like magic. Everything you write and hear in that room just sounds like magic. Something about that room is the atmosphere – all of the legacy scores that have been performed in that room, you know. Some of the Indiana Jones scores were recorded there with the Star Wars scores. That orchestra is just so fantastic. So you hear that orchestra in that room, and it almost instantly sort of evokes those feelings from those iconic franchises from the early 80s, which is what I grew up loving.
Many thanks to Gordy Haab for taking the time for this interview.
Chris Connor