Oct 12, 2026 · 16 min · 9 segments
Grammy and Bafta winning composer Austin Wintory stars in the premiere episode of Source Files, a new series in the Game Maker's Notebook podcast family where we ask developers what games were most…
Austin WintoryGuestSource Files HostHost
austin wintory and i'm a composer i've done games like journey abzu the banner saga assassin's creed syndicate most recently sword of the sea and this is source files something which was singularly uh inspirational to me on a personal level the the instant Front of the line, unhesitating, knee-jerk answer to that is Grim Fandango.
That score came out in the late 90s, kind of right shortly into the CD-ROM period, where music was able to undergo a fundamental shift in games.
8-bit, 16-bit, where it's being generated by the hardware of the console itself, or like a Tandy speaker in your PC, that sort of thing.
And once the CD-ROM hit and we had this capacity for recording actual audio, composers have started experimenting with that.
And the first one that really changed my whole perception, I was a teenager, I was in high school at the time, was Grim Fandango.
Because it wasn't just that Peter McConnell, the composer, staff at LucasArts, part of the kind of LucasArts power trio of those days of Clint Bajakian, Michael Landon, and Peter, responsible for the sound and music for all these iconic 90s LucasArts titles.
peter wrote this score that kind of blended the the the mexican day of the dead folklore kind of qualities of grim pandego with this 1940s pulpy film noir and and rather than just write kind of straight ahead music and get straight ahead musicians to record it it's all these like dripping with personality incredible soloists these great sax players and i know he always talks about this clarinetist who played bass clarinet for tom waits in the group of course peter himself playing violin and you know he would go to basically jazz clubs around the bay area and get these musicians and so the result is you're playing this game and it's not just music and it's not just music that has been played live, but is more or less straight ahead there.
It is music that is being brought to life by these individual personalities of the actual performers and becoming more than the sum of its parts.
And it ends up being this, it's kind of like the voice cast in Grim Fandango.
They breathed a life into it that made it wholly beyond a typical game in the way that we were used to hearing in those early days of games having actual VO.
That's a lot of responsibility, Mr. Calavera.
What makes you think I've been all that good?
Miss Colomar.
Meche,
please.
Meche.
I can see it in your face and in your file here, where it says you're entitled to a first class ticket to...
Nowhere? What?
Did I do something wrong?
Not according to your bio.
It was spotless.
austin wintory and i'm a composer i've done games like journey abzu the banner saga assassin's creed syndicate most recently sword of the sea and this is source files something which was singularly uh inspirational to me on a personal level the the instant Front of the line, unhesitating, knee-jerk answer to that is Grim Fandango.
That score came out in the late 90s, kind of right shortly into the CD-ROM period, where music was able to undergo a fundamental shift in games.
8-bit, 16-bit, where it's being generated by the hardware of the console itself, or like a Tandy speaker in your PC, that sort of thing.
And once the CD-ROM hit and we had this capacity for recording actual audio, composers have started experimenting with that.
And the first one that really changed my whole perception, I was a teenager, I was in high school at the time, was Grim Fandango.
Because it wasn't just that Peter McConnell, the composer, staff at LucasArts, part of the kind of LucasArts power trio of those days of Clint Bajakian, Michael Landon, and Peter, responsible for the sound and music for all these iconic 90s LucasArts titles.
peter wrote this score that kind of blended the the the mexican day of the dead folklore kind of qualities of grim pandego with this 1940s pulpy film noir and and rather than just write kind of straight ahead music and get straight ahead musicians to record it it's all these like dripping with personality incredible soloists these great sax players and i know he always talks about this clarinetist who played bass clarinet for tom waits in the group of course peter himself playing violin and you know he would go to basically jazz clubs around the bay area and get these musicians and so the result is you're playing this game and it's not just music and it's not just music that has been played live, but is more or less straight ahead there.
It is music that is being brought to life by these individual personalities of the actual performers and becoming more than the sum of its parts.
And it ends up being this, it's kind of like the voice cast in Grim Fandango.
They breathed a life into it that made it wholly beyond a typical game in the way that we were used to hearing in those early days of games having actual VO.
That's a lot of responsibility, Mr. Calavera.
What makes you think I've been all that good?
Miss Colomar.
Meche,
please.
Meche.
I can see it in your face and in your file here, where it says you're entitled to a first class ticket to...
Nowhere? What?
Did I do something wrong?
Not according to your bio.
It was spotless.
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