Frank Klepacki on Command & Conquer, Warhammer and game music

Interview by Adam Davis Fernsby for Playiro. Questions are Adam’s; answers are Frank Klepacki’s.

You've created some of the most instantly recognisable music in video game history. What do you think makes a game soundtrack become part of its identity instead of just becoming background music for players?

Taking Command and Conquer as an example, I think the reason that connected with so many people is, obviously, the game itself has to be great. So I get to be part of that team, part of that experience. So it's not something I'm gonna ever take a lot of credit for.

But what I will take credit for is the fact that I made that music foreground music, not background music. So, my whole point is when I play this game personally as a gamer, I want to feel that adrenaline rush. I want to feel motivated. I want to feel like: “Yeah, I'm gonna go for it. I'm gonna go take out that enemy space. Yeah, I'm gonna build up my—I'm gonna feel good about doing this."

I'm gonna feel something about the activities that I'm personally executing, my strategies on the screen. So, that's how I approached the music. That's why I think it resonated with people, because I wasn't trying to be lost in the background. I was trying to push the motivation forward of the gameplay itself.

You’ve said in the past that even Westwood's president would sit in on some of your sessions for Command and Conquer. How involved did the higher ups want to get with your creative process?

So it was really mainly the president of Westwood, Brett Sperry. He was very involved in the creative process. He wanted to be along every step of the way for every department. So he would meet with the artists, programmers, designers, producers, and myself, audio director.

My audio director, Paul, at the time, was very influential with me as well, because he had a really good sense of how to translate what Brett was kind of saying. So a lot of times, between the two of them, I would get most of the feedback for the creative process, and generally they gave me a lot of freedom. So they wanted to encourage me to do a lot of different kinds of things and see what would fit the best. So I was encouraged to try a lot of different variety things, and if they wanted to hone in on a few different pieces of that, then we would kind of have more discussions directly about that. Sometimes it was about, "Oh, I'd like to see this kind of be more this direction," or sometimes it's just more tweaks, like, "Oh, can we alter the mix a little bit?" or things like that.

So most of the process was like that. It was just a little bit of feedback back and forth, but most of the time I had creative freedom to execute on what I felt, and most of the time it all got used.

Does it make a difference when higher ups take a real interest in the development of the games they are overseeing in such a way?

I think there's something to that. My experience is, I mean, over the several decades now in game development, I've seen quite a few scenarios of different teams working together and different people in charge, whether it's on the development side or even the publishing side. Sometimes publishers who are funding the developer will also interject their feedback on certain overarching things, and/or just sometimes be at a disconnect even, like where the development and the publishing side kind of butt heads a little bit over what changes should be made or not be made.

A lot of times in my department, I don't really get affected too much by that kind of stuff, but sometimes it does affect me. And when it does, it's usually something major has to have happened for that to directly affect me. Like, oh, there was a sweeping change in the story now and everything has to be rewritten, which means everything has to be rerecorded and I'm like, "Oh god, really? We just already spent our budget on that." So it's things like that on the back end of the business side that affect the creative process times.

But most of the time, yeah, I'm usually 90 to 95 percent accurate with how I execute on things regarding music and in other aspects of audio too, but sometimes you just got to roll with the punches, per se.

But getting back to your original point, I think that if the people that are really running the development have genuine passion and love for wanting that project to really be great, they're willing to make some sacrifices for that to happen. And I've seen that where, okay, you know what, we're gonna make this game late. And our publisher may not like it, but it needs an extra three to six months in order for it to be awesome.

It could be good now, but it could be awesome in six months. And we think it's worth the risk and the extra money or cuts that we need to trim here and there in order to make that happen. And when I've seen that happen, a lot of times it does pay off. So I think that if you're willing to stick your neck out to make something great, it's worth it.

Were there any situations where you needed to do a rework based on other developments?

Yeah, there were a few times that's happened. Not that I had to rework everything I did already, but I would get kind of further along in the process before things changed.

Tiberian Sun actually was one of those games. I got a head start on that game thinking that, okay, this is the natural Command and Conquer sequel, so I think I have an idea of what to start formulating some score ideas with. And I started along that trajectory only to be cut off and say, "No, we're not looking for that. We want something more post-apocalyptic feeling now, and we want to go in this other direction." And I'm like, "Oh, oh shoot. Okay. I didn't get the memo. So now I gotta go and restart." So that was one instance of that.

And then there was another instance. I remember working on Star Wars: Forces of Corruption on the voice recording part of it. We had scheduled all of these actors and we had everything lined up ready to go with the script, and then the script changed at the last minute. And so we all were freaking out about, okay, now how do we get this in time for the recording sessions? And so that was quite a scramble. So, yeah, it's just things like that happen sometimes.

You’ve said you’re a fan of fantasy RPGs but what if someone came and tasked you with creating the soundtrack to a new Fable game or Elder Scrolls VI to make it your own?

It's really more about immersing myself in that world, in that subject matter. That's what really drives my creative process. And I love those kind of games.

You mentioned Elder Scrolls, I love those games. So I would just always, I would start the way that I always do working on any game, which is to sit down with the team and get a sense of the story, the main characters that we're dealing with. What is the main goal of the players trying to achieve, or several goals they're trying to achieve, and then what is the world supposed to feel like?

I would then kind of pull from examples we talk about. And then I would just start filtering, just through how I'm feeling, and seeing where that's gonna take me, create the in terms of executing on the different areas you're gonna be in. What did those areas feel like? How do they differ from each other? What is this? Is there, like, a melody I'm going to assign to a character or other characters that you encounter and things like that? And then, stylistically weave that into something that not only fits the game but is coming from a place of my own personal creative expression of that.

It would just be a fun, rewarding experience that I would get to contribute to something like that, because I just love that subject matter so much. So it would be awesome to get back into that again.

One very different type of game that I worked on recently, it's not out yet, but there are trailers available online. It's gonna be on Steam. It's a game called They Will Come, and it's a steampunk adventure game. So it was a whole different kind of thing, a lot of suspense-driven music and combined with a little bit of hybridization. And it was just kind of fun to take some machine-like sounds of a steampunk vibe but combine that with an orchestral vibe and element, and that was a lot of fun. So opportunities like that, when they come around, I like to take advantage of those and try to do something unique.

Is there a specific IP you’d love to work on some day?

Man, yeah, I love Transformers as an IP. So I would love to work on something like that. I used to be a big fan of the Unreal Tournament series back in the day. I don't think that's coming back anytime soon, but something like that would be fun to work on, that or like an Overwatch maybe or something like that.

And gosh, I loved Baldur's Gate 3. That was one of my favorite games that I played. So Dungeons & Dragons kind of storytelling that's on that level, I would love that so much because, yeah, I'm a D&D fan myself.

What did you make of Baldur’s Gate 3 and the reception it received?

I thought it was perfection, honestly. I mean, Larian Studios did such an amazing job. Their audio team did such a great job. Just everything felt right. Everything just felt like not only did it feel like very familiar D&D to me, but it also felt very immersive. It was just like, god. This is so big. Everything is just, there's so much attention to detail.

Walking around the town, all of the conversations you overhear walking around, all of the ambient sound, all of the stuff going on, the interactions with so many side things you can do. I mean, it was just incredible, the level of love, care, and detail that went into it. I was truly like, okay, yeah, this deserves game of the year. I mean, it just does, period. Doesn't matter if you like D&D or not. It's just that well done.

Was there talk of a Command and Conquer board game at one point?

I remember they toyed around with a physical card game idea at one point, but I don't think it ever came to fruition, but I do remember them trying that out around the office.

When I was at Petroglyph, we had done a couple—they did a couple of board games based on their video games. We did a game called Guardians of Graxia, and then they turned that into a board game. And then we did a Panzer General game, which also turned into a board game as well. So they had both.

Considering Command and Conquer helped make RTS one of gaming's biggest genres, do you think the industry has forgotten why people loved RTS games in the first place?

Rule number one, it needs to be fun. If you give people too many hurdles to get over in order just to get started or to get relatively good, it becomes a bit of a deterrent, especially for new players.

The thing that was great about like Command and Conquer, and even Dune 2 when we did that RTS, and which is the first RTS, is that they were easy to get into. It wasn't hard to figure out which units were gonna do what. It was very easily explained, and so that's the thing—you want to be able to get into the game and start having fun quickly without having to learn to humans and be overwhelmed, right?

Oh, I've got to get this to create this recipe and get this ingredient and put that together, and then I can build that, and then I can have this unit, and then it is this—wait, is this unit still good at this, or do I have to use this other thing for this counter?

And then your brain gets flooded with too much information that you have to keep track of. I think if you can never that down, and some games are better at this than others, some games good at like piecemealing things. Okay, we're gonna get you started and it's more like a tutorial, but then you'll learn along the way.

The thing that I think that's forgotten about is that you need to be able to get in and just start going and having fun, and then you can learn relatively quickly. That's helpful to keep people engaged. There at some point there was more pressure on developers to—how are you gonna innovate? How are you gonna make something new and different and get new feature sets and blah blah blah?

Well, that's all well and good, but if you start taking too much away from getting into the game and just having fun playing, then that becomes kind of the roadblock. That becomes kind of the problem, I think.

Petroglyph made a lot of RTS games. Do you think players and the wider industry ever gave the studio the recognition they deserved compared to the reaction to Command and Conquer?

Well, it's kind of one of those things where, as we got into the mid-2000s, Petroglyph had a really great start with working on Star Wars: Empire at War and the follow-up Forces of Corruption. And apart from those being popular IP games, everybody knows Star Wars, so the IP is a big help in the sale of that.

The thing that I will genuinely say without bias is those are genuinely great games. Like, I'm a Star Wars fan personally, like die-hard. So I grew up with that stuff. Love it. I always wanted to be involved in it. Got my chance finally with Petroglyph to work on those games, and as a fan first and foremost, I thought those games were brilliant.

I thought they were great design, great fan service, and a unique approach to the RTS too, because we had space battles, you had land battles, and you had a galactic mode which you could still strategize and make moves in on the galactic level just between planets before you even get down and do your actual real-time battles. So all of those things combined, I thought, was very fluid, very well executed, and really got me immersed in the Star Wars universe the way that I wanted to as a fan. That was great.

Moving forward though, the other games that we did that did not have strong IPs attached to them, or that were new IPs, that was a harder thing to communicate over to the general public, I think. And it's unfortunate because there were some very innovative RTS games they did that I thought should have gotten a lot more marketing or attention on them, that I think at the end of the day, maybe just the publishers just didn't have enough behind it to push it forward.

One of those games was Universe at War. That was the next game we did after Star Wars, and it was really a cool different spin on it because we had three unique factions and we had this sort of a tech tree that was set up that you could actually reverse engineer. So instead of building your tech up to a certain level, you could actually go back and make different decisions and undo things based on what your enemy was throwing at you. So if you wanted to say, "Oh, he's got that, I wish I would have built this," you could actually go back and do that.

That was also when the compatibility for PC and Xbox was brand new. I think it was called Games for Windows or something like that. Anyhow, that whole thing with Microsoft was definitely weird. It didn't launch the way that we'd all hoped, and so that kind of I think hurt that game, too, unfortunately, because it did come out for Xbox as well as PC.

There was another game we did after that called Grey Goo, which was a cool sci-fi RTS. And that had a cool innovative thing with the goo faction where it actually was in real time able to maneuver over mountains as like a ball of goo that then transformed into units. And that was a really cool technological new thing that we hadn't seen before, especially in a faction. So and it had really good production value as well. We had some great CG animated cutscenes, good voice acting, all of that. So it was another kind of diamond in the rough, I think, that people may have missed out on a little bit.

And from there, you just try to do your best to work on good projects that you think you're gonna do something. Thankfully, we got to actually do the Command and Conquer Remastered Collection. So we got to… actually a lot of the original team that worked on the original games, myself included, we got to go back and relive 25 years ago what we worked on and polish it up and get it to look and play in 4K and play on Windows 11 and have updated graphical enhancements, the cutscenes a little bit, and I got to polish the audio and make it modern quality fidelity. And so that was definitely a labor of love for sure. I mean, we went back and found every last detail we could to upscale and make it something that could be enjoyed all over again for both old and new players.

I'm curious about the remaster. How did the idea come up? Was it like a Petroglyph pitch for EA, or did they just reach out naturally to you guys?

I believe it was EA that reached out to Petroglyph at that point. Our producer Jim Vessella had reached out. He was very passionate about the Command and Conquer series and a great guy to work with. He really has a love for the series and wanted to do it right. I think it was after Rivals had come out, the mobile game. A lot of fans just kept asking, "Can you just give us another Command and Conquer game and not do the mobile thing?" And I think that kind of prompted the conversations and said, well, maybe we can remaster the originals and figure out a way to do that. And so we got together with Petroglyph and we made it happen.

When you look at how they handled Command And Conquer throughout the years while you were at Petroglyph, what do you think EA got right?

Number one, you got to think of this as this is business, right? This is what people don't see on a regular basis. For a gamer, you appreciate the games and you hope that the next game in the series is gonna be as good or better. But as things shift on the business side of things, when Westwood went away and EA had the IP… actually when they came back to revisit that IP…

I think the people that were bringing those new games in had their heart in the right place. Red Alert 3, for example, when that came out, I mean, they were really trying to pick up where Red Alert 2 left off. And that was very clear to me when they brought me in for my involvement. I got to do some of the main themes there along with the other composers, and when I got to sit down with the game and actually check it out, I was like, okay, yeah, this is cool. And the way they did naval battles was really clever, and I appreciated it, enjoyed that. So I thought they got that stuff right in terms of the feel. It felt like a Red Alert themed game. It felt like it was in the right zone for that.

And then later on, when they got around to doing C&C 3 Kane's Wrath, I thought those were really cool. C&C 4 we won't speak of. I thought that was just a really missed opportunity there with where they could have gone and how that was handled. But I also happened to know that a lot of decisions behind the scenes were shifting quite a bit there. So I think that was just the way that came out. So, yeah, and unfortunately, I wasn't involved in any of those at that time. I had other things going on.

For the franchise, I thought that the remastered thing really went well. Having been a part of that and just seeing the inner workings of how that all came together, that was a total passion and place of love coming into that, making that as good as it could be. And it felt right.

What are your reflections on how Westwood Studios came to an end after being acquired?

Well, my account of that was that it was kind of jarring for me. Granted, I wasn't privy to a lot of behind-the-scenes business decisions that may have been happening back and forth. I'm sure that a lot of that we were shielded from, probably a lot of that, obviously.

Westwood definitely felt like a very special place, though. I mean, it was the era of game development. We got to see a lot in the years of us working together. I got started straight out of high school and worked on the NES and every console and every PC and audio card that came out every year. Like, it was new tech to learn and deal with and write for and do games for. And so I think when you have a team of people that grow together that way and have that much history together, you feel a special bond. It feels like a work family. I know that's kind of cliché. A lot of people say that, but it was really true. We did have friendships from that and hung out outside of the office from that and went to parties together, had drinks together or whatever, all of that stuff.

And so all of that, when you have that kind of environment, it feels special to the point that you want to put the extra effort in. You want to put the extra few hours in to make something that much cooler. "Hey, I know it could do this, but we did this way, it could be that much better." So a lot of us were driven by that and loved that. And yeah, we went through some harder, tougher times here and there, like, oh, we've got deadlines to meet. Oh, we got a crunch, or we got to do this, or we know we're gonna change this decision now and we got to make it happen. That's just normal, but when we got to the end, it was just like, oh my gosh, this is really gonna break apart now? Like, oh my, it was like a very shocking thing to learn.

And after EA acquired it, I mean, we were still going full force as we always have, but I think there was more pressure on the business side. I think, for things to be successful, in terms of financially, games had to do well. They had to hit a certain number or have a certain review score. Like all of that stuff started to become more important to the publishing aspect. And I think that's when it started to kind of be a little different, started to feel a little different, started to be more pressure that way, started to feel like, okay, where is this going? What's gonna happen? And you started to feel that from the publishing side creeping into the development side a little bit more. And it didn't use to be that way.

I mean, there were different pressures, of course. I'm sure that management of Westwood would tell you, yeah, there was pressure that we shielded the rest of our employees from, but it was just different. When you have this different kind of scrutiny placed on things.

It was a shame because we had games that were really fun, but maybe they didn't do as well, or maybe they did okay, but not as good as the publisher would have wanted. So, yeah, Pirates: Legend of Black Cat, on the PlayStation and Xbox. I thought that was a really fun game, but maybe just didn't get the traction that they'd hoped. And then we did Earth and Beyond, which reviewed so well and had a good solid player base and people loved it, but yet again, it was just like, it didn't do quite good enough for us to merit keeping the servers going or whatever. It's a little disappointing.

They consolidated a few different studios into one office in Los Angeles. Westwood was part of that. The way they handled that I didn't care for because it just felt like they just came in and said, okay, here's what's going on. Studio's closing. We're gonna offer jobs to a handful of people, and other people will keep you on standby, and other people—we're sorry, see you later.

My point of this is that when you have that large history, you have that family bond with a company, and all of a sudden an unknown entity comes in and says, okay, here's what's happening. It's like a jarring experience. And that was just my personal impression at the time.

And I thought it could have been handled a little more smoothly. But again, I wasn't privy to a lot of the business behind the scenes, so maybe decisions were made leading up to that that I don't have any idea about, and it does—just how it felt. But that's my recollection of it.

If EA called tomorrow and said you can bring Westwood back together and asked what do you all needed to make another Command And Conquer game, what would be your response?

I don't know that ever could really happen in the true sense of how it was because the industry itself is so different now.

I feel like there's a lot of pressure for certain numbers to get hit as far as financial goals. “Well, we're not gonna even bother with this game unless we think it's gonna hit X dollars.” And there's just less risk being taken by publishers and in funding in general for investing in games. People want to either focus on IPs that currently are already successful or something that they feel like they can realistically hit the numbers. And because of that, a lot of the middle ground, middle-class developers, I guess you wouldn't call it, a lot of them have gone away.

So you have the triple-A companies still putting out the big products that everybody is familiar with, and then you've got these indie companies that are just like a few guys working in a small office somewhere or at home and coming out with cool little fun casual creative games. And some of them become rather successful.

There might still be a handful of mid-level studios out there doing stuff, but not as many as there used to be. And a lot of it is because of that kind of financial scrutiny now that exists, that kind of expectation. That, unfortunately, I think, cuts out a lot of creativity, too. I wish there was more creative games being made, a lot more chances being taken the way that it used to be, because that's really what Westwood did. They took a lot of different creative challenges and made lots of different kinds of games besides RTS that were all cool in their own right.

I mean, games like Blade Runner, which was a point-click adventure; games like Monopoly, which we did—it was like the first internet version of Monopoly; games like The Lion King, it was a platformer on the Super Nintendo; and so on and so forth. Pirates, which was like an adventure, third-person adventure action game. Things like that were really cool. And I like having that variety to work on. I miss that in general. So I hope to do more of that in the future, too.

I think that's the long answer to your question, but I think that's why Westwood couldn't really come back the way that it was, because I don't think it would be allowed to do all of those kinds of things or take those kinds of chances now.

What do you think of EA today and their impact on games and the industry today?

Everything's different now. All of the people from way back then, most of them are gone now. Ones are still there, like completely new teams have formed around there. The culture is completely different. The EA I remember visiting 20 or 30 years ago is not the same as it is now.

I mean, I think there's still some good stuff coming out of there and good people working there, a completely different regime now. So it's just all about the project at the end of the day. Who's leading the project, what team are you working with, and if everybody's gelling together and has good chemistry and good decisions are being made, especially on the management side of things, then you've got something special. Every game can have its own sort of special team and place in how it's being made and what those experiences are, and those all vary. So at the end of the day, that's what it should be about. Is this the game really—well, is it done well? Did it come from a place of people with real passion working behind it, and not just, well, here's a money grab and the game sucks. So that's all it's about for me now. I just want to work with good people and passionate teams.

You left Petroglyph recently?

Yeah, yeah. The studio had to trim down quite a bit, basically because of the reasons I was saying. Just like there's not a lot of risk being taken right now. So I'm freelancing currently and working for other companies, different contracts that come through. So I am a free agent.

What was it like to work on Warhammer as an IP?

Speed Freaks Warhammer 40K. That was fun. It's kind of like along the lines of Twisted Metal a little bit, but with the Warhammer series, with the orcs and stuff. I thought it was really well done. So much fun. I had a blast playing that game. I was glad that they contacted me to do a couple of tracks for them. So that was super fun.

How was it working on an IP based on a tabletop franchise? How do you come up with music for something that at least in its origins actually had no music?

I mean, it's really just about talking with the lead producer on that, and he's saying, "Hey, we want to kind of have some adrenalized music on this," and it was familiar with my style enough to want to use that. So it worked out great.

And it's a different kind of game. Like, yeah, Warhammer's known to be a tabletop game, but this particular game was not that. It was its own thing. It's like a Twisted Metal kind of game instead, sort of racing around, doing capture point and blasting the other cars out of your way and racking up kills. So very action-oriented, very adrenaline-based. There's not a lot of music during the gameplay, but it's mainly in the menus, score screen, different stuff like that, trailer, all of that.

Did Warhammer ever influence any of the previous works you've been on?

Other developers I worked with have played it. I never played the tabletop myself, but I did play one of the RTS games— the Dawn of War series. I remember playing that and enjoying that, seeing them kind of put that into that context.

And I worked with one of the designers, Chris Becker, on that. He was at Petroglyph and he was awesome. Really had a great understanding of all of that. Just one of those guys that just—he knows how to dissect something and really take it apart, put it back together in a better way. And he just comes up with some really clever design ideas, and so I appreciated that. So knowing after meeting him and working with him and then knowing he was part of that, I'm like, oh, this makes all the sense in the world, dude. That was brilliant.

What would be your reaction if you found out that a game or soundtrack was created by AI trained on your work?

I just look at things in the legal sense. AI is the Wild West right now. Everybody thinks it's a new toy to play with, and while it's used for a variety of purposes, the main thing is that if someone is monetizing something that is using my work in any way, then that's illegal and then that would be a course of action to pursue. Other than that, if they're just doing it hobby-wise, just having fun with it, so be it.

What do you think gets lost when the person writing the music no longer has to live inside the world that they're scoring?

Music is about emotion, at the end of the day. It's about having a human connection. That's the whole point. It's a form of expression. So if you're just using a prompt to generate something, that's not an expression, that's the prompt generating something they think you want based on a sentence. So there's nothing to connect to. That's the reality of it.

Why do you think people go to see a live concert? Because that's a real, genuine connection. There's someone in front of them singing. There's someone in front of them performing an instrument. There's someone who has skill that is showcasing what they can actually do in front of you.

So in that respect, AI music is not gonna replace that. It just isn't. It's not an actual experience. It's just something that has been generated to listen to and has no real connection to it because the person who generated it did not actually take the time to write it, come up with their thoughts, their feelings, their expression of their own from who they are and their personal experiences. So that's why you can't compete with that. At the end of the day, that's what's gonna be missing. That's the thing that's lacking entirely.

What can you tell us about your current projects?

I have other things that I'm doing as well all the time. I'm still putting out my own solo albums. I have a Patreon community centered around that. So I include everybody in sort of the work in progress and the decisions I make along the way regarding that. Sometimes my solo album releases get licensed for other video games, so it ties into that.

I also perform live. So I just recently did a live show at MAGWest, which was a music and game festival in San Jose, a couple weeks ago, so that was a blast. I got to do a sort of a career retrospective set of performances of a lot of different games. Myself and the Tiberian Sons then we combined forces together to perform that stuff. I'm still touring with the Family Stone on drums. So yeah, I still stay pretty active in all aspects of music in game development as we go.

Are you proud to see your work on the Command And Conquer games now available on Steam as remasters?

It's also one of the most successful remasters out there. I mean, it's been reviewed as such, saying like this is how you should do a remaster. A lot of people were kind of holding that as like the new standard compared to how other remasters have been done. So that was really endearing to hear from the press and from a lot of, of course, the CNC community as well.

I should note too, as far as adding to what we were talking about earlier, that we did involve this CNC community directly in the remastering process because our producer Jim felt really passionate about wanting to include the council that he put together for that from all over. And that really helped as well because those got the CNC community, especially the council that are in charge of a lot of the fan sites and mods and total conversions and all of that—like they're diehard into it. So they're like, oh, if you're gonna remaster this, oh, we got to do this, or you got to make sure you include that. And a lot of that stuff we were going to do anyhow, but it was nice to get their input in detail and also address that and be like, oh, yeah, that is a good idea. We should include that, or we should figure out how to do this in a way that's clever for a modern operating system or some stuff like that. So that was also a big part of the heart of that process that really resonated with all of the fans too.