Masatoshi Yanagi (Composer)

How long have you been with The Evil Within 2 team? What’s your primary job within the team?

It’s been about 2 years since I joined the team. I was primarily in charge of composing and implementing the music for the game.

What’s your favorite memory/anecdote from the process of developing this game?

The music for this game was recorded in Prague, Czech Republic. Having the music I’d composed being performed by a real European orchestra was so moving that it gave me goose bumps.

What was the most challenging aspect of creating your part of The Evil Within 2? What are you most proud of?

The most challenging aspect that jumps to mind was actually implementing the music in the game, more than composing it.

How should it start, how should one track connect to another, should we stop it here? How can we use it to the greatest effect to give the user the best experience possible? That took a lot of trial and error, and a lot of hard work.

Nobuko Toda from FILM SCORE LLC and Suminobu Hamada from SOUND INN STUDIO INC. both helped out a lot in the production of music for this game. They also both happen to have been my teachers when I was still a student. I felt a lot of pride at having the opportunity to work together with both of them to create a single composition. Having my compositions performed by professional musicians in Prague, going through the mixing process, and then getting it implemented and hearing it in the actual game, feeling life being breathed into my work, was deeply moving.

If you were involved in developing both Evil games, how did the creative process for the second game compare to the first?

I wasn’t involved in the first game, but I did work on the DLC. For The Evil Within 2, it was decided early on that the story would focus more on Sebastian’s personal issues than last time. Since the core theme of the game was decided so early on, it made it easier to flesh out and refine the score, as far as the actual composition goes.

How did you get into video games as a career? Is there one game in particular that inspired you?

I was originally working in a job (train conductor) that had nothing at all to do with games. But I’d always dreamed of working in the game industry, and the desire to give it a try got stronger and stronger until I decided to quit my job and study music composition. After that, Shinji Mikami hired me, and that’s how I got into the industry.

As far as the most influential game for me, there are so many that it’s hard to pick one; but if I had to pick just one, it would be ICO.

What’s your favorite horror/survival game of all time? Favorite horror movie?

Game: Resident Evil remake

Movie: Misery

What game(s) are you currently playing?

Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, Dragon Quest XI, and Horizon Zero Dawn

What was the number one thing you kept in mind when composing BGM for a survival horror title?

Planning things out to bring the player back and forth between states of relative tension and relaxation.

That moment when the tension is released is one of the most enjoyable parts of survival horror, so you need to design things in a way that makes sure to relieve the tension at appropriate moments, rather than just keeping things scary all the time.

There are also times when silence is the most effective way to cause tension, so effective use of silence is also an important thing to keep in mind when designing music.

Are there any special techniques you use in your compositions to keep the players feeling tense, nervous, or desperate?

This obviously doesn’t apply to every track, but:

One way is to eliminate a steady, predictable rhythm. I especially kept this in mind when making the music for when the player is exploring or actively working toward their objectives. When the stable rhythm suddenly drops away to be replaced by an unsteady rhythm or even something where you can’t find the rhythm at all, it makes you unconsciously tense up. This makes it a useful technique for keeping the player feeling tense and nervous.

Another technique is putting sounds into the music itself that the player could mistake for sound effects (especially environmental ones). This technique is called musique concrète.

Using certain kinds of music such as drones, we keep something playing that the user’s mind won’t immediately link to music, but it hangs there in the periphery, unconsciously elevating their tension.