Frank Klepacki - Petroglyph Games

Petroglyph Games

Klepacki took a brief hiatus to work on solo albums, then joined Petroglyph games as full-time audio director in 2004. He prepared by becoming versed in the job's requirements and demands. His first task was scoring Star Wars: Empire at War, Petroglyph's launch title; he also helped select voice actors. A die-hard fan of the Star Wars franchise, Klepacki enjoyed complementing John Williams's style as he worked with sound effects used in the feature films. He worked closely with programmers to ensure perfect aural functionality. Though most the game's score is John Williams's work, Klepacki estimates that he contributed 20% original material. Apart from the main theme, he aimed to minimize his editing in order to retain the classic Star Wars sound. He chiefly composed for new areas of the Star Wars universe only found in Empire at War. He calls his work on the game "the peak of my career," and felt he had spent his entire life grooming his abilities for that soundtrack. As a perk of composing, he visited Skywalker Ranch and Industrial Light and Magic, and took pride in having his name associated with an official Star Wars product.

For the Forces of Corruption expansion pack, he took greater creative liberty with the Star Wars feel by writing an original theme for the new criminal faction. In attempting to compose this piece, he wrote several preliminary hooks that were later integrated into the game's battle themes. He composed six pieces for the expansion total, including the finale theme. In line with the criminal theme of the game, Klepacki borrowed motifs and recreated the mood from scenes involving Jabba the Hutt in Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. His score for the expansion pack was accepted upon first submission to Lucasarts. As Petroglyph's audio director, he also selected sound effects—a tricky process due to the issue of making the criminal faction's sounds a "little different, without straying too much from the original signature sounds." Klepacki worked with LucasArts to select voice actors, and contributed his own talents to the role of IG-88 and other minor characters. A blooper reel of his voice acting was released on Petroglyph's forums after the one-thousandth member registered. Frank Klepacki was contacted to score Command & Conquer 3, but was too busy with duties at Petroglyph and declined to mention the offer publicly. Electronic Arts hired Steve Jablonsky to score the game; an EA community manager at C&C 3's forums suggested that the audio team studied Klepacki's music and tried to recreate his style. Klepacki feels that Command & Conquer is a significant part of his life and that he would like to return to the Tiberian era. He conceded that employment at Petroglyph games would probably prevent him from working with Electronic Arts.

Klepacki's next project was a game collaboration by SEGA and Petroglyph named Universe at War: Earth Assault. As of December 2006, he had composed several songs for various factions and enjoyed the "opportunity to create something new again, not based on...existing intellectual property. Klepacki "began by taking into account what songs were identified as fan favorites in...past related work". He was interviewed about the creative process on March 27, 2007 by Kevin Yu, a Petroglyph community manager, and provided a detailed tour of his studio at the company. His office included one of the fastest computers at Petroglyph and a vocal booth where unit responses and other vocalizations were tested and tweaked before voice actors performed finishing work. Klepacki was glad that Universe of War did not demand strict obedience to a particular style. He declared that surprises were in store for Command & Conquer fans waiting for him to return to his "roots" and "adrenaline-pumping soundtrack style", and suggested that they "imagine my mindset...when Command & Conquer first came out, and add about fifteen years experience to that." Klepacki summarized the game's main styles shortly before release:

For the Hierarchy—our evil alien race—I went with a more heavy-metal rock influence, to go along with how they stomp all over everything on the map with their massive walker units. Novus—our high-tech, hit-and-run faction—featured more industrial electronica to go along with their futuristic robotic feel. For our third faction, the Masari—our ancient star-faring side—I provided an epic orchestral feel, with worldly influences to reflect their godlike nature and questionable links to our past. One Masari track in particular, "Divine Intervention," would become the central theme to the whole game.

As audio director, Klepacki also created many sound effects for Universe at War. For the alien Hierarchy, he cultivated an "unnatural" aesthetic through an "arsenal of mangled noises". Klepacki used a "combination of heavy cranes recorded with overdriven impacts" to give the faction's walkers a "menacing machinelike breathing sound", and made up his own language to record "various grunts, growls, mannerisms, and strange vocalizations. Since Hierarchy heroes needed to communicate to the player in English, Klepacki engineered dialogue to seem as if the aliens were "telepathically speaking to you, with a back-masking effect on their voices...as if the words are being channeled straight to your brain". The Novus effects were usually phased and involved "mechanical movement, electricity, and metal sounds". He invented yet another language for two characters Viktor and Mirabel, who occasionally speak to one another. Lastly, he drew on weather and other natural sounds for the Masari, describing their ambience as having "more weight, thunder, heavy bass rumblings, vortex gusts..." Klepacki directed the voice-acting to have a "noble and strong" feel without appearing typically medieval or overly dramatic. He ultimately felt he did the work of "three people" with Universe at War, as the game's audio requirements changed constantly, requiring vigilance and programmer support. Divine Intervention was later nominated for a Game Audio Network Guild award, and the soundtrack was released as a free download after Petroglyph's efforts toward a traditional release were frustrated.

Klepacki next composed three songs for Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, including Hell March 3. Hell March 3 was recorded with the aid of a 4-piece rock band alongside the Skywalker Symphony Orchestra and Choir at the Skywalker Sound scoring stage; the choir also sang in Russian for an updated version of Grinder from Red Alert 2. He remarked in 2008 that he would never grow tired of Hell March, and was thankful it had resonated with so many fans. Around this time, he composed using Cubase, Kontakt, a MOTU 2408 audio interface, and several instruments. Collaborating with Video Games Live, Klepacki performed Hell March and its Red Alert 2 version in Las Vegas in 2008, and later performed Hell March 3 in the Netherlands with a choir and orchestra through the Games in Concert series; he wore a Soviet army conscript uniform for the song. Klepacki expressed a desire in 2009 to score an Unreal Tournament series game and a "generation one-style" Transformers game, as well as a blockbuster movie.