Outside of its art style, the thing people often remember the most from Rayman Legends is the game’s iconic music levels.
You’re thrust into a castle wall and as you run you start hearing the dulcet tones of Ram Jam’s 1977 hit Black Betty – albeit with the lyrics replaced with gibberish spewn by the villains from the platforming levels you just played through. And throughout the rest of the game you hear variations of other popular songs adapted to Rayman‘s zany humor, (the Mariachi remix of Eye of the Tiger being the highlight).
But aside from Orchestral Chaos’ original tune and Grannies World Tour’s adaptation of Rayman Origins‘ Land of the Livid Dead, these musical levels have a thread between them: all of them are one-hit wonders (yes, Survivor fans, I like Burning Heart too, but let’s be real).
And the two new musical levels I’ve seen from the upcoming Rayman Legends Retold remake are also very much in that category, so I was curious if this was almost a meta joke in its own right.
Catch the beat
“It’s not a complete coincidence” Charlie Atanasyan, associate audio director at Ubisoft Montpellier, told me. The songs are intended to be instantly recognisable, which allows the audio team to come up with unique compositions.
“What we want to bring with musical maps is to try to explore and play with all the music styles that you can” he says, adding “if we can play with something that a lot of people know – a very famous song – it works even better because it instantly gives you a smile, because you know the track, and the work that has been done by Christophe [Heral] and also respond to the cover and the creativity that they put into it.”
Since then, other platformers have been seemingly inspired by these, like Sackboy: A Big Adventure which ditched one-hit wonders for massive artists like Britney Spears and David Bowie. While Super Mario Bros. Wonder took its own spin on the level with its rhythm-based Ninji levels – sans the licensed tunes.
But these impersonators weren’t what inspired Ubisoft to return to make more music levels, Atanasyan explains,: “first, it’s really great for us developers developing these kinds of levels, it’s very, very interesting and fun to do.
“We know that we have a huge fan base that asks ‘can we have some new musical levels,’ so that’s just why we have developed some new musical events.”
New to this version of Rayman Legends is the inclusion of characters speaking as opposed to gibberish, with Rayman’s original voice actor David Gasman returning to the role alongside Billy West as Murfy.
While this is most prevalent in the new cutscenes, characters will have lines during gameplay too. I noticed this a lot, but it just avoided crossing the line of becoming an annoyance, asking how this balance was struck when the original wasn’t able to be used as a point of reference, Atanasyan told me, “you’re never sure that you find the sweet spot.”
“What I do to try to find the best balance. First I play a lot the game, but also I check also a lot of different players, developers, and also some play testers playing the game with [their] own rhythm” he explains, adding that its about trying to find a “sweet spot” between players who rush through the maps at full speed, versus those who are going to take their time.
And on top of that “we have a bit of tech behind [it] also that uses values on cool down that avoid [too much repetition] of a specific line”
Music aside, I was curious as to how the new realism-inspired art style informed the team’s approach to sound design. One of things that stuck out to me is before entering the second half of the first level, the score disappears. This was to avoid “getting tired” of a given tune, he adds, “Introducing short breaks works even better when it restarts, you enjoy it even more.”
This was also meant as a shoutout to the art team’s efforts, as Atanasyan explains, “the second reason is because the environments are so nicely detailed on the deep that we wanted also to give the opportunity to the player to just take time just enjoying all the details of the animation.”
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scott.mccrae9512@gmail.com (Scott McCrae)
