![\"Cyberpunk](\"https:\/\/www.gameinformer.com\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/body_default\/public\/2023\/09\/14\/ab594212\/night_city_wire_header.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\nWhile my conversation with Adamczyk and Paciorkowski was mostly about the Phantom Liberty and Edgerunners<\/em> scores, having not talked to them about Cyberpunk 2077, I was curious how they first approached this universe’s music. Adamczyk says it was about taking the direction of Cyberpunk, which he feels is rooted heavily in 1980s music, and bringing it to the 1990s.\u00a0<\/p>\n “We wanted that kind of edge in our score, and that kind of edge can mean many different things, but for us, it was the music we grew up on,”\u00a0Adamczyk says, noting U.K.-based inspiration like The Prodigy and Europe’s techno scene in the later 90s. “At first, it could be a little restricting because it’s super difficult to be subtle and underscore things with a four-on-the-floor kick drum going all the time, but it was our way of making a stamp on the genre as a whole, and really differentiating our take on cyberpunk [the genre] from what was already out and what had been done so well in the past.”\u00a0<\/p>\n Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty composer P.T. Adamczyk<\/p>\n<\/article>\n When it came time to develop the score for Phantom Liberty, Adamczyk says the process was quite different, namely in that the music team began by conversing with the game’s narrative director, Igor Sarzynski. He outlined the entire Phantom Liberty storyline, what characters like Solomon Reed, Somi, and President Rosalind Myers would go through, and more. Adamczyk says the Cyberpunk 2077 score was written alongside the game’s development, including its story, whereas CDPR already had Phantom Liberty laid out.<\/p>\n “It allowed us personally to really focus on the relationship between Reed and Somi and treat that as a baseline for the entire score because from my point of view, the musical point of view, I would say that we basically go on this journey with Somi, V, and Reed together and that’s the main heart of the story,”\u00a0he says. “The spy thriller thing is obviously there, but it’s like fancy clothes, and underneath it is the Somi relationship.”\u00a0<\/p>\n Paciorkowski says creating the spy thriller aspect of Phantom Liberty’s score was quite easy because Adamczyk and the rest of the team had already created the foundation for this world’s music. For me, the Phantom Liberty theme song, “Phantom Liberty”\u00a0by Dawid Podsiad\u0142o, screams “spy thriller,”\u00a0with an almost Cyberpunk-ish take on a classic James Bond song. The team agrees, noting that’s the most forward spy thriller song on the soundtrack, but Paciorkowski says he doesn’t approach songwriting and composition with “spy thriller,”\u00a0which might utilize 1960s and ’70s vintage orchestra and jazz lines like what’s heard in 007<\/em> movies, in mind. Instead, he just wrote about the relationship of the characters.\u00a0<\/p>\n As for those characters, Adamczyk and Paciorkowski describe the relationship between Somi and Reed as a “cold sense of tragedy.”<\/p>\n “It’s not something that’s operatic in the way that it’s expressed,”\u00a0Adamczyk says. “It’s fairly subtle, which is great because you can work a lot of dialogue in and there’s a lot of dialogue in the game, [but] also, it has this sense of being unresolved.”<\/p>\n He says that’s not what he thought when he wrote the Phantom Liberty score, but rather, something that he realized after writing a few of the score’s main cues. Ultimately, he wanted to portray that Somi and Reed were once friends, and they wish they weren’t in the situation they are in during Phantom Liberty. “But it’s hard to forget the past and what it used to be like for these two, and I think in a different set of circumstances, they would probably act differently.”<\/p>\n Adamczyk points to Podsiad\u0142o”s “Phantom Liberty”\u00a0lyric, “Please tell me you brought the iron,”\u00a0as an indication of how Somi and Reed’s relationship must go, even if they wish things could be different.\u00a0<\/p>\n Adamczyk tells me the team asked Podsiad\u0142o about joining the Phantom Liberty soundtrack because of the way his voice mixes both “manliness”\u00a0and masculinity with “great vulnerability,”\u00a0noting that this intersection speaks to the roots of the “spy”\u00a0music we associate with the genre today.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n![\"Cyberpunk](\"https:\/\/www.gameinformer.com\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/body_default\/public\/2023\/10\/25\/9cf13187\/adamczyk.jpg\")
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