Doom Eternal executive producer addresses OST controversy, reveals Mick Gordon won’t compose DLC music

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Doom Eternal is easily one of the very best games of the year Carving up Hell’s legions never grew stale and was improved by Mick Gordon’s thumping soundtrack.

Fans were at first upset at the quality of the game’s OST release– pointing out wavelengths with less range– as Mick Gordon didn’t mix the majority of the tracks. Gordon also then presumably raised doubts about ever working with Bethesda once again. Now, after a couple of weeks of silence, Stratton finally penned an open letter on the official subreddit describing the situation from inside.

In it, he applauded Gordon for his work before also declaring that he also missed lots of his deadlines and had a lot of creative freedom. These deadlines were very important due to the fact that of how some countries have consumer protection laws that let consumers get a full refund if that “product is not delivered on or about its announced availability date.” Gordon was initially supposed to deliver the soundtrack (12 tracks minimum) in early March for the digital soundtrack and collector’s edition with complete creative control and “bonus payments for on-time delivery.”

However, he hit snags in late February; however, he stated he’d have the ability to get around 30 tracks with the extra time, which ended in mid-April. Stratton even stated his bonus payment was moved to this new date. However, April hit, and the team needed a backup strategy, so Lead Audio Designer Chad Mossholder was designated to develop “id versions” of the music in case something happened. Gordon was informed of this in “early April” and recommended that he work with Mossholder, combining both of their tracks to “come up with a more comprehensive release.”

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On the new due date, Gordon noted that he was still completing the music. However, he would have his 12 contracted tracks that night. They were not complete by the next morning, and when he sent in 9 tracks he completed, Stratton stated they weren’t up to the standards people anticipate from a Doom game considering that they were “ambient in nature” and not the heavier combat tracks. Those 9 (including two others) were spliced into the OST chronologically with Mossholder’s work. Stratton stated he even offered to put the final twelfth Gordon track in as a bonus later on.

Doom Eternal executive producer addresses OST controversy, reveals Mick Gordon won't compose DLC music

Gordon has actually not responded to Stratton’s open letter, however, obviously, the two emailed each other just recently, with Gordon mentioning his concerns with the editing, fan attacks on Mossholder, the scope of the 59- track soundtrack, and concerns with offering Mossholder a co-composer credit (which Stratton stated wasn’t true in the metadata). Stratton, in addition to stating Gordon, did “nothing to change the conversation about attacks on Mossholder,” responded with how id did the very best with what they had. This consists of the “bricked” music as id does not have access to the songs with the higher dynamic ranges.

“From our perspective, we didn’t want to be involved in the content of the OST and did absolutely nothing to prevent him from delivering on his commitments within the timeframe he asked for, and we extended multiple times,” stated Stratton.

He also exposed that Mick won’t be composing any new music for the game’s upcoming DLC (which we still do not know much about) and hinted that they would not be working together in the future either.

“I’m as disappointed as anyone that we’re at this point, but as we have many times before, we will adapt to changing circumstances and pursue the most unique and talented artists in the industry with whom to collaborate,” he stated. “Our team has enjoyed this creative collaboration a great deal, and we know Mick will continue to delight fans for many years ahead.”

Gordon did mix the Doom 2016 and Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus soundtracks. Both of those albums released several months after their respective games: four months and five months, respectively. This pattern shows that he likely requires a lot of time to properly mix these tunes to be played outside of the game. It’s possible that launching the soundtrack this close to the game’s release didn’t quite fit into his regular groove of mixing game music and is why he presumably missed his deadlines.

Neela
Neela
I work as the Content Writer for Gaming Ideology. I play Quake like professionally. I love to write about games and have been writing about them for two years.

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