Many thanks to Richard Joseph, audio director at Elixir, for taking time out to answer my questions... much appreciated! Hope you will all enjoy reading about an aspect of the game which is rarely mentioned. On with the show...

Note: You can download a clip of some of the background music used in one of the actions by going to my audio downloads page and selecting the sound clip!

1) Richard, many people will have heard about Demis Hassabis, but not so many about you. Can you briefly sum up for us what your position is in the team? And can you please tell us who else is working in your 'department'?

Although the games playing public won't know who I am a fair number of people in the industry do, as I've worked with many of the leading figures over the years. Demis originally signed me up to work on Republic because he'd been a keen player of the Amiga games I did soundtracks for in the early 90s. My job as Audio Director at Elixir is difficult to define. Generally speaking I will have an overview of the sound for each project, and keep an eye on the pace of the development of the game in general so that we're always ready with whatever's needed. From a creative point of view I give myself the 'difficult' bits to do- in Republic's case it's the city sounds, shops, ambiences, vehicles and the like. Malin Arvidsson is working on all animation sounds- footsteps, shoe scuffs, punching, door slams, in fact all the sounds you hear in the Actions. Andy Mucho is coding the sound engine, editors and tools and whatever special-case routines we need. James Hannigan is providing the music underscore.

2) Music in games is slowly becoming as important as music in films, although it is rarely mentioned. What do you think will make your music stand out from the crowd? What is new and innovative about it?

Well for a start it's by James Hannigan. That in itself will make it stand out! James is highly regarded in the very best circles. He was nominated twice at the Bafta awards in 2000. He consistently impresses. For Republic Jim has developed a way of making the music change to suit the mood. I can't go into details obviously but we know it works well!

3) Creating the many sound effects for the game must be time-consuming. How long have you and your team actually worked on the audio, and are you nearly finished yet?

Malin has been spotting sound to Republic's animations since January 2001 !! She still has many more animations to complete. I myself have been assembling ambiences and spot effects for Republic for about 3 years. We now have a large library of material for the game including specially recorded authentic vehicles, real anti-war demonstrations, incidental music pieces for cafes, and we continue to drag the entire development team in to the studios to bolster our library of crowd chants and yells. We recorded a couple of hours worth of sims-like speech a year or so ago, and while this has been useful for the various demos and presentations we have yet to record the 'real thing'. James has been providing music pieces off and on for about three years too. All in all I would say that we still have a vast amount of work left to do! Getting it all working seemlessly in the game will be a major task in itself.

4) The voices of the characters in the game speak a weird Sim-like talk. Who actually did the voices for these when you recorded them, and what was it like watching some-one speak complete nonsense into the microphone? Or was it done some other way?

Voices are being produced by Yuri Stepanov and a team he is assembling of real Eastern European actors. As a kid in St Petersburg Yuri grew up making up daft languages with his mates. As an actor now residing in London he is ideal for this job! The stuff you will have heard so far was all taken from a couple of sessions we recorded with Yuri some time ago. Up until now my job has been to match various phrases from these sessions with the animations we have being using for the Republic demos. Within a month or so we will have recorded the dialogue 'for real', actually working with animations and full Actions. Is it weird watching people talk rubbish? Well, I have to say that our 'gobbledegook' sounds in every way like an Eastern European language (someone from Belarus said it sounded Yugoslavian).

5) In total, how many hours of background music has been composed for the game, and what types of music are there? And how many seperate sound bytes for effects and voices are there?

We're expecting something like 5 hours of music, but it's hard to say with so many combinations of individual channels and mood levels. All the music will have an orchestral\cinematic presentation and each city will have it's own individual 'theme', for instance Pugachev has a Kletzmer style folk theme running through it. We will be attaching sound effects to anything that makes a noise- birds in the trees, market stalls, the Metro, shops, cafes, vehicles. There will be a different ambience for day and night, and for each city. Dialogue will be everywhere- people in the street, in cafes, parks, as well as Action related speech. We are designing all elements of the soundtrack to be as natural as possible with many of the animations having several 'layers' of sound effects and passages of dialogue each chosen at random.

6) When I heard the music for myself, it seemed to morph amazingly from one type of music (ie happy) to another (ie depressing) when required. How hard was this to achieve?

Put very simply everything is rhythmic, which means that each section of music or even just the individual channels will come and go exactly when they're meant to in relation to each other. This is actually a very straightforward way of doing things but the difficulty is presenting the music so it sounds natural. Cinematic music, indeed any orchestral-style music has an ebb and flow, so on paper this approach would appear to limit the scope of the composer. But as with anything in games audio the trick is always to use a problem to your advantage and although I believe it was very hard to a suitable method initially it does seem that this approach works perfectly in Jim's hands.

7) Do you work full-time at Elixir? What about the others in the department?

Andy and I both work full-time for Elixir. James is a freelance composer but he and I have worked together on a variety of projects over a number of years now, and since he is also signed up to work on other Elixir projects he could easily be thought of as 'full-time'. Indeed it's only because he works at such a high volume that we insist he stays at Audio Interactive's premesis, some 15 miles away! Malin spends the majority of her time on Republic, working very closely with the game's designers animators and programmers, but she'd like to remain freelance- as long as there's still the odd gig recording sound for something like 'Survivor' in The Maldives :-)

8) Is there anything you would like to say to visitors about your work or your opinions on the game itself?

I was a hardened freelancer until Demis persuaded me to break a habit of a lifetime and come in-house. That should say everything about how I see the company and Republic.