The Last of Us composer on the "revolution" that made players cry, and the "anxiety" of TV adaptation

22.05.2024 - 13:33 / radiotimes.com / Neil Druckmann / Gustavo Santaolalla

Ahead of his recent concert at the Game Music Festival in London, the amazing composer Gustavo Santaolalla spoke to RadioTimes.com over Zoom about his experience making the iconic musical score for The Last of Us.

In this wide-reaching chat, Santaolalla looked back on his journey with The Last of Us, and touched on the fact that his collaboration with developer Neil Druckmann and his company Naughty Dog was something of a «revolution» in terms of emotional storytelling in games.

Check out the video version of the interview above, or read on for the written edition!

«The fact is that I'm a terrible gamer,» Santaolalla says, before describing himself bumping into virtual walls at every opportunity.

«But I have a son,» Santaolalla adds. «And I always enjoyed watching him play.

»And I always thought, you know, if somebody, at some point, connects with a gamer in a more emotional way, has a more soulful connection, outside of killing and the survival and fighting [...] it's going to be a revolution."

This idea remained just that, an idea, until Santaolalla earned a massive amount of success in the movie industry. After winning two Academy Awards, for his work on the films Brokeback Mountain and Babel, he had his pick of new gigs.

Santaolalla recalls: «I was approached by several companies, one of them a very big company, with a couple of huge projects. Financially, but also in terms of exposure, I mean, they were big projects.

»And I always like to say that, whatever success I have achieved has to do not only with the things that I've done, but also the things that I have passed on. And at the time, it was big to say no. But I knew what I wanted.

«Then suddenly, Neil [Druckmann] appeared, and the story of The Last of Us. And he also pointed out that he was looking to connect with the gamer in that level, you know?

»So I got to work into it. It was very organic. I had total freedom to do whatever I felt.

«And when we learned that people were crying playing the game, I mean, it was confirmation, you know, that yes, this was really happening.

»I mean, the vision that I had, and what Neil had in his mind, that was something that was functioning and everybody was connected."

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In terms of how he found the game’s beautiful signature sound, Santaolalla says: «I work really in a very primitive, primal, instinct-driven way. There's not a lot of reasoning behind it. Lots of times, what happens to me is that I do things, and then rationalise them [after the fact].»

This retroactive experience