Although this site and podcast are called “The Film Scorer”, every so often it’s nice to chat with someone who does significant work in another medium instead. Today, that someone is Jesper Kyd (Hitman, Assassin’s Creed). Jesper has been scoring for games for over thirty years, working on some of the biggest video game franchises around. But he’s also worked on a number of films (like the Indian films Tumbbad and Crazxy), leading to the best answer I’ve ever gotten to the question “what’s the difference between scoring for video games and movies?”
Jesper’s latest score is for Warhammer 40,000: Darktide. In fact, Jesper has been scoring this game for years – it first came out in November 2022, and with new maps, characters, events, and other updates he keeps writing new music for it. The result is four separate releases, the latest of which was just in August of this year, about 25 minutes of dark industrial electronic music for running and gunning. I must have spent a dozen hours listening to those releases getting ready for this interview, and let me tell you: I was ready to join the 40th millennia’s endless war.
Jesper’s score for Warhammer 40,000: Darktide (Volumes 1-4), and much of his other music, is available on all major platforms. You can find out more about Jesper on his website.
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More About Darktide
“Jesper Kyd’s highly popular grimdark soundtrack for Darktide comprises a dark operatic and heavy synth soundtrack, employing his arsenal of vintage analog synths and Eurorack modular synths, haunting vocals and gothic choir, establishing bold new musical directions for the Warhammer franchise”