Halo 3 composer Marty O’Donnell interviewed

Halo 3 is out, and it seems like it’s selling alright so far. While everyone is talking about how it looks and plays, we haven’t heard much about how Halo 3 sounds. The Halo series of games have always been amazing-sounding titles, but the third version seems to be the most accomplished of the scores. Music4Games interviews composer Marty O’Donnell to get some insight into what it was like to create the score for what could be one of the biggest console games of all time.

O’Donnell talks about his scoring process, Bungie’s proprietary adaptive music system, and the pressures of writing music for one of the most popular game series. He also touches on the massive amount of work that went into Halo 3′s score.

When asked about how much music he composed for the score, O’Donnell said, “That’s not easy to say. In terms of pure musical data in the engine, I’m around 7 hours. I’m not using everything, and that includes lots of different mixes and arrangements of some of the pieces. I can say this much, Mike Salvatori and I are now working on trying to make a Halo 3 Soundtrack and I’m certain we’ll need two CD’s.”

When asked about his involvement with a Halo theatrical release, O’Donnell said, “Ask Peter Jackson, and let him know I’m available.”

Check out Music4Games for the full interview.