If you're watching this on December 17th, then I just turned 18 that day! I would’ve loved to have interviewed the original team somehow, but it was quite impossible. The only person I was able to get in touch with was Ed Harrison, the main composer for the game. He was kind enough to answer some of my questions. I had a lot of questions in mind, but I kept them brief and short because we’re all busy people at the end of the day, and I didn’t want to take too much of his time. I don’t like to do self inserts or break the fourth wall, but let me know if I should do an interview with him on an actual call, as I’ll actually try my best to conduct one if the video performs well. I’m not a professional; I’m just a boy who loves playing video games for the past decade decade. 1. What was the main inspiration for the entirety of the soundtrack? As from what I've read the entire atmosphere was inspired by Ghost in the Shell, Deus Ex, was that the case with the OST as well? Ed: The two main focal points of inspiration were the original Ghost in the Shell anime film (Mamoru Oshii's adaptation) and Akira. For me the inspiration from their soundtracks was more conceptual than directly musical (although that was definitely happening as well). Both films have soundtracks which utilize musical ideas that span time and cultures. For example, you have the traditional Bulgarian choir sounds in the GiTS OST, which evoke an indigenous spirituality. You have church organ and the earthy gamelan percussion sounds in Akira. None of these flavours are directly what you would think of as 'modern Japan' per se, but they serve the deeper concepts of the stories and are highly evocative. Additionally, the cyberpunk setting is by definition a melting pot of cultures and times due to the increasing connectivity, intersection and fusion of culture that is facilitated by technological advancement. Looking at the music this way was liberating. It didn't matter at all what time or place a musical element was traditionally linked to, it could have a conceptually fitting role and find rich and interesting context along side elements that may juxtapose it or come from entirely different culture, time period, and so on. So that became a big part of my philosophy when beginning to explore the setting musically. The other thing I wanted to do was focus on worldbuilding, telling not the literal story of what was on screen, but the unspoken story of the setting - the lives and emotions of the people of that world and time, and their cultural memory as well. Akira brought to the surface ideas relating to Japan's cultural memory of the events of World War 2, so this was echoing in my mind as I explored Neotokyo's setting too. I wanted the setting to have a heart, and tell an empathetic story of human beings rather than simply celebrate the action with punchy action music and be literal in describing the action on screen. I felt free to incorporate musical elements that I was interested in exploring, especially electronic styles that I was relatively new to but was loving to explore (for instance the Warp Records IDM-related stuff from the likes of Squarepusher, Aphex Twin, Autechre and Boards of Canada, as well as bands like Radiohead and Tortoise whose work explored the space between established genres). I really took inspiration from anything that interested me, and applied it through a symbolic lens that I felt was relevant to the setting. To boil that down to its simplest form, it was something like: seeing acoustic, traditional and ancient elements as vaguely representing humanity, and seeing electronic, synthetic and futuristic elements as representing technology, and exploring the intersection of the two. Additional techniques like sampling and explorations in effects processing also helped integrate the two ideas sonically and conceptually (for instance electronically manipulating acoustic samples). 2. How was it like working as a composer for Neotokyo? I guess it's more like, was the experience great? Ed: It was a great experience because I had a lot of freedom and trust from the team. Everyone was supportive to one another and it was a really positive experience. Had I been more experienced I would have tailored the music better to the actual game and gameplay experience, but this was all new to me. It was my first time exploring electronic music at all, and I didn't even really know what I was trying to create until I had spent a very, very long time experimenting and exploring and generating a lot of material. In the end it became more of a companion album than a traditional game soundtrack, but thankfully people appreciated it nonetheless and it helped build the game's identity. I was really inspired by the neotokyo mood/concept artwork of pushBAK / Leri Greer and was reflecting on it constantly during the process. 3. Were you invovled with the original UT2004 (Unreal Tournament 2004) project before Neotokyo transitioned into a source-engine game? Ed: Yes, I did sound and music for the UT2004 version. Most of those tracks became tracks on the eventual OST release. There were also contributions from two other composers which fit really nicely. We basically did that as a prototype because of the delay of Half-Life 2's release. The team had the intention to use the Source engine from the very beginning. We were all fans of Valve's games and that's a big part of what brought us together in the first place. 4. I know it's a bit of a stretch but If Neotokyo had some sort of a sequel or more like an 'expanded version', would you consider coming back to compose more tracks? Ed: I always wanted to see Neotokyo expand into a narrative single-player game (with the multiplayer too, of course), and it would definitely be enjoyable returning to the music. I think most of the team would have loved to at least flesh out Neotokyo's development further if not expand to a project like that, but there were some issues that prevented that at the time, and then life being life, everyone found their paths and got involved in other things. It might be difficult to 'get the band back together' nowadays. For me to work on it now, it would need to be a funded project as I don't have the kind of time to work on something for literal years, unpaid, like I did when we were a young modding team with less life responsibilities and a whole lot more time at our disposal. 5. I know you aren't the right person to ask but after Neotokyo, what pretty much happened to the rest of the members of Studio RADI-8? Because I've seen Deus Ex Breach, and your work there was spectacular, I wish the game was great haha Ed: I believe most of the team found other work in this and other creative indistries. For example Monochrome LLC's games (like Contagion), and also Leri went on to work at Weta Workshop doing amazing work on films like District 9 and the live action Ghost in the Shell film.
as someone who's lived in japan thank you for describing the atmosphere 23:19 and i've played the mod back then and seeing nakatsu station 25:09 right now feels like a fever dream (of course its loosely inspired not entirely based on the map) but still so awesome because my parents had stayed in ōita 🙂it looks like the production quality has surely improved but still lacks something because of a lot of repurposed footage and messy editing styles like your red faction guerrilla video, i see it and it adds to the feeling of filler content but stilll happy to give you that 'sweet watch time' at the disclaimer part of the video ahaha good work once again and make longer videos as well and wish you expanded on the atmosphere part of the video very nice with the color theory, colors like red, white and blue are often seen as having good ore values and living a honest life theres a lot of meanings behind each color so its not entirely all the same and also seeing that mgs3 snake eater ad brought some memories as well ahahaha good luck in the future✌💛
I appreciate the criticism, but we like our editors to show off their own editing style, similar to TRO (The Right Opinion), but I will take your feedback into consideration because it's what plagued the Red Faction video. And also I hope you had a pleasant stay in Japan-thanks for watching once again and for longer videos, that's what we're planning to do for this month (upcoming 2 videos as per-planned), the Neotokyo video was in literal editing-hell for quite a long time and a lot of sections were obviously rushed but we had to put some quality detail at least. We also had almost 1TB of gameplay footage and our naming conventions were incredibly messy lol (we're cooked)
While we were editing the video, we played neotokyo for a bit with some nice people ✌️ Extremely awesome community and the game reminded me a lot about counter strike neo!!
Absolute banger of a vid! Also happy belated birthday To 😘 See you in dem Tokyo streets, do let me know when ur next gonna play I'll join if you need some cannon fodder ;) - Javanox
yooooo awesome video i dont know if you remember me but i watched your polytoria videos back then im glad you left that site since its become toxic but why did you private all your videos?? also what do you use to edit man this video is dopee
Yeah, I think it's pretty obvious the community at PT does NOT like me anymore and I would rather keep it that way. They've pretty much allowed everyone they hated back into the community, not my problem and personally don't care if the entire community there hates me. I use Sony Vegas also
If you're watching this on December 17th, then I just turned 18 that day!
I would’ve loved to have interviewed the original team somehow, but it was quite impossible. The only person I was able to get in touch with was Ed Harrison, the main composer for the game.
He was kind enough to answer some of my questions. I had a lot of questions in mind, but I kept them brief and short because we’re all busy people at the end of the day, and I didn’t want to take too much of his time.
I don’t like to do self inserts or break the fourth wall, but let me know if I should do an interview with him on an actual call, as I’ll actually try my best to conduct one if the video performs well. I’m not a professional; I’m just a boy who loves playing video games for the past decade decade.
1. What was the main inspiration for the entirety of the soundtrack? As from what I've read the entire atmosphere was inspired by Ghost in the Shell, Deus Ex, was that the case with the OST as well?
Ed: The two main focal points of inspiration were the original Ghost in the Shell anime film (Mamoru Oshii's adaptation) and Akira. For me the inspiration from their soundtracks was more conceptual than directly musical (although that was definitely happening as well). Both films have soundtracks which utilize musical ideas that span time and cultures. For example, you have the traditional Bulgarian choir sounds in the GiTS OST, which evoke an indigenous spirituality. You have church organ and the earthy gamelan percussion sounds in Akira. None of these flavours are directly what you would think of as 'modern Japan' per se, but they serve the deeper concepts of the stories and are highly evocative. Additionally, the cyberpunk setting is by definition a melting pot of cultures and times due to the increasing connectivity, intersection and fusion of culture that is facilitated by technological advancement. Looking at the music this way was liberating. It didn't matter at all what time or place a musical element was traditionally linked to, it could have a conceptually fitting role and find rich and interesting context along side elements that may juxtapose it or come from entirely different culture, time period, and so on. So that became a big part of my philosophy when beginning to explore the setting musically. The other thing I wanted to do was focus on worldbuilding, telling not the literal story of what was on screen, but the unspoken story of the setting - the lives and emotions of the people of that world and time, and their cultural memory as well. Akira brought to the surface ideas relating to Japan's cultural memory of the events of World War 2, so this was echoing in my mind as I explored Neotokyo's setting too. I wanted the setting to have a heart, and tell an empathetic story of human beings rather than simply celebrate the action with punchy action music and be literal in describing the action on screen. I felt free to incorporate musical elements that I was interested in exploring, especially electronic styles that I was relatively new to but was loving to explore (for instance the Warp Records IDM-related stuff from the likes of Squarepusher, Aphex Twin, Autechre and Boards of Canada, as well as bands like Radiohead and Tortoise whose work explored the space between established genres). I really took inspiration from anything that interested me, and applied it through a symbolic lens that I felt was relevant to the setting. To boil that down to its simplest form, it was something like: seeing acoustic, traditional and ancient elements as vaguely representing humanity, and seeing electronic, synthetic and futuristic elements as representing technology, and exploring the intersection of the two. Additional techniques like sampling and explorations in effects processing also helped integrate the two ideas sonically and conceptually (for instance electronically manipulating acoustic samples).
2. How was it like working as a composer for Neotokyo? I guess it's more like, was the experience great?
Ed: It was a great experience because I had a lot of freedom and trust from the team. Everyone was supportive to one another and it was a really positive experience. Had I been more experienced I would have tailored the music better to the actual game and gameplay experience, but this was all new to me. It was my first time exploring electronic music at all, and I didn't even really know what I was trying to create until I had spent a very, very long time experimenting and exploring and generating a lot of material. In the end it became more of a companion album than a traditional game soundtrack, but thankfully people appreciated it nonetheless and it helped build the game's identity. I was really inspired by the neotokyo mood/concept artwork of pushBAK / Leri Greer and was reflecting on it constantly during the process.
3. Were you invovled with the original UT2004 (Unreal Tournament 2004) project before Neotokyo transitioned into a source-engine game?
Ed: Yes, I did sound and music for the UT2004 version. Most of those tracks became tracks on the eventual OST release. There were also contributions from two other composers which fit really nicely. We basically did that as a prototype because of the delay of Half-Life 2's release. The team had the intention to use the Source engine from the very beginning. We were all fans of Valve's games and that's a big part of what brought us together in the first place.
4. I know it's a bit of a stretch but If Neotokyo had some sort of a sequel or more like an 'expanded version', would you consider coming back to compose more tracks?
Ed: I always wanted to see Neotokyo expand into a narrative single-player game (with the multiplayer too, of course), and it would definitely be enjoyable returning to the music. I think most of the team would have loved to at least flesh out Neotokyo's development further if not expand to a project like that, but there were some issues that prevented that at the time, and then life being life, everyone found their paths and got involved in other things. It might be difficult to 'get the band back together' nowadays. For me to work on it now, it would need to be a funded project as I don't have the kind of time to work on something for literal years, unpaid, like I did when we were a young modding team with less life responsibilities and a whole lot more time at our disposal.
5. I know you aren't the right person to ask but after Neotokyo, what pretty much happened to the rest of the members of Studio RADI-8? Because I've seen Deus Ex Breach, and your work there was spectacular, I wish the game was great haha
Ed: I believe most of the team found other work in this and other creative indistries. For example Monochrome LLC's games (like Contagion), and also Leri went on to work at Weta Workshop doing amazing work on films like District 9 and the live action Ghost in the Shell film.
This video is like eating a lobster in an all you can eat buffet, except you finish it in 30 minutes and then you realize there's no more lobster...
this is like the most american analogy ever
Start watching again from the beginning and you've got more lobster
@@adamtomaszewski5568 The lobster tasted good but it has no seasoning this time...
as someone who's lived in japan thank you for describing the atmosphere 23:19 and i've played the mod back then and seeing nakatsu station 25:09 right now feels like a fever dream (of course its loosely inspired not entirely based on the map) but still so awesome because my parents had stayed in ōita 🙂it looks like the production quality has surely improved but still lacks something because of a lot of repurposed footage and messy editing styles like your red faction guerrilla video, i see it and it adds to the feeling of filler content but stilll happy to give you that 'sweet watch time' at the disclaimer part of the video ahaha good work once again and make longer videos as well and wish you expanded on the atmosphere part of the video very nice with the color theory, colors like red, white and blue are often seen as having good ore values and living a honest life theres a lot of meanings behind each color so its not entirely all the same and also seeing that mgs3 snake eater ad brought some memories as well ahahaha good luck in the future✌💛
I appreciate the criticism, but we like our editors to show off their own editing style, similar to TRO (The Right Opinion), but I will take your feedback into consideration because it's what plagued the Red Faction video. And also I hope you had a pleasant stay in Japan-thanks for watching once again and for longer videos, that's what we're planning to do for this month (upcoming 2 videos as per-planned), the Neotokyo video was in literal editing-hell for quite a long time and a lot of sections were obviously rushed but we had to put some quality detail at least. We also had almost 1TB of gameplay footage and our naming conventions were incredibly messy lol (we're cooked)
9:34 look ma' im on TV:D!! Banger vid, lots of effort put on this one
i would totally play neotokyo if there were naked japanese women like duke nukem did
i think you need to get off the internet
Awesome video!
okay now let's see neotokyo 3
banger
winsf btw
just a correction at 09:49 - support thermals don't highlight cloaked players
ppreciate it' and thanks for pointing it out
common NSF W
While we were editing the video, we played neotokyo for a bit with some nice people ✌️ Extremely awesome community and the game reminded me a lot about counter strike neo!!
hi my beloved editor, you're fired !! ❤️ merry crismas
this is a good video bro keep it upppppp
thank you for bringing me in to the video as always boss 💜💜
today you're not fired since you basically carried half the entire video
Yo awesome my dude
Absolute banger of a vid!
Also happy belated birthday To 😘
See you in dem Tokyo streets, do let me know when ur next gonna play I'll join if you need some cannon fodder ;)
- Javanox
how the HELL does this vid have only 200 views with editing like this? take my sub!
You're too kind, it's not exactly the best type of editing but thanks for watching
nice video token
what the fuck is this masterpiece i think im going to end it all
don't end it today, end it some other day, thank you
- love, oogly boogy bear
happy bday, tecksture, lets hope its the last one
yooooo awesome video i dont know if you remember me but i watched your polytoria videos back then im glad you left that site since its become toxic but why did you private all your videos?? also what do you use to edit man this video is dopee
Yeah, I think it's pretty obvious the community at PT does NOT like me anymore and I would rather keep it that way. They've pretty much allowed everyone they hated back into the community, not my problem and personally don't care if the entire community there hates me. I use Sony Vegas also
God damn.. That’s all I have to say.
You forgot the kshatriya link in the description
@@JollyGiuseppe thanks for reminding me
token
crimson
this video sucks
I remember playing neotokyo back in the day, still a pretty mediocre experience. I wouldn't recommend.
I wouldn't say it's that much of a mediocre experience, it would be like saying every source mod/conversion is a mediocre experience
this is a good video bro keep it upppppp