After being cooped up indoors for almost two years now, diving into Far Cry 6 feels like a sure-fire break from everything that's been going on. Getting swept away to the fictional Caribbean island of Yara and exploring its pristine beaches and lush forests easily feels like a holiday, until you realize this island getaway is actually pretty close to the harsh realities of the world today.

You play as Dani Rojas (performed by Sean Rey and Nisa Gunduz), a freedom fighter who joins the Libertad guerrilla movement in an effort to overthrow the Yaran dictator, Antón Castillo, (flawlessly played by Giancarlo Esposito) and his fascist regime. You're armed to the teeth with ridiculously creative DIY weapons and gear, and of course, paired with a furry, scaly, metallic, or feathery sidekick who is just as determined to beat the bad guys as you are.

Yes, Far Cry 6 is a political game. And it's come at a perfect time, too. Through the game's compelling main story and action-packed side quests, players can experience how complex political revolutions truly are and how important it is to properly understand them. It's daringly eye-opening and created for the fearless.

Bandwagon caught up with audio director Eduardo Vaisman and music composer Pedro Bromfman to talk about how music and sound make games even bigger, the importance of authentic voices, and what it takes to get your foot in the gaming industry.

What was it like working on Far Cry 6, since you've worked on many other Far Cry titles before?

Eduardo: Working on Far Cry 6 was very special from the beginning for mainly two reasons: it was the first Far Cry that Ubisoft Toronto was leading. And it was also my first role as audio director in a game as big as this.

I've been playing it for the last three years (laughs)! I played all the time. In the process of mixing the game, I needed to play every mission, every character, everything to balance the music, the gunfight, the voices, so yeah, I played it a lot of times (laughs).

How did you get involved with Ubisoft to work on the Far Cry 6 soundtrack?

Pedro: It was very early on, I've been with Far Cry 6 for over two years actually. I had done some work with Simon Landry before for a trailer that they were putting together for Ubisoft. And then he said, "Oh actually we're developing another game that you may be perfect for with your Latin background and being from Brazil and being very familiar with Latin music."

They started sending me some very rough early visuals that they had put together with other footage, and then he asked me to submit a few tracks. I submitted a few tracks and not soon after that, like two weeks after that they're like, "You're perfect for this! Everyone loves it, let's do it." And we had to jump in right away we they were putting together a 10-minute gameplay to send it to the Paris headquarters for them to look at. So right away we jumped in and started writing music.

We had a little hiatus after those initial 10 minutes to really think about what the music needed to be, develop the themes and to really do a more thought out process. Initially we just blurted [things] out, and a lot of it ended up being used in the game. We were very happy with the initial output, but then we took our time over two years develop the rest of the score.

How huge of a collaborative effort was it? Were you given a lot of creative freedom to create the score?

Pedro: Oh, it's very much so a collaborative effort. I mean, yes I had as much freedom as I've ever had on a visual project.  I'd never felt that my music was so appreciated and respected, and all the ideas I had were really accepted and welcomed.

What I like about what I do—whether it's film, TV, games—is that I'm not just the one having to conceptualize or do everything. It's a collaborative process, so we're always talking. We were getting feedback from the narrative team and understanding more what the story was and who the characters were.

I was talking with the audio team about what the sound should be and what the instrumentation should be. Everything that they were feeding me—from visuals to the meetings we had to the discussions we had—fed into the process of creating music—which ultimately, is me in my room, writing the music to the visuals.

For us to get there, it's very much a collaborative process of bouncing ideas, listening to stuff together, seeing what works, what doesn't, and going on from there.

What was your creative process like? Could you compare it to any previous projects you've had?

Pedro: Games are a little different than film and TV. A lot of times in film and TV, they bring a composer last minute and they already have an initial cut of the film. A lot of times it already has music in there that they had to temp for the editor to edit the film with, so they've already placed the music in in there.

With the games I've been involved in, I was brought in so early that all of the music that's getting put into the game is already my music. We really have freedom to create something new and we're not trying to copy or get as close as possible to something because the director is already in love with that like sometimes happens in films and TV when we don't have a lot of time.

The dynamic of the game is a little different than than writing for film and TV. When you're working on cinematics, it's very much like working on the scene for a movie or TV so that part is similar, but when you're working on gameplay openworld or a specific missions, everything has to be able to play for a long time or for a short period of time so everything has to be able to loop while keeping the music interesting and adding new elements through different layers, or adding intensity.

Let's say you're fighting just two enemies. It's a much more contained version of the music than if 30 enemies show up in the within the same music, so everything needs to be able to escalate and to keep looping around while bringing in new elements that keep it interesting for the for the player. And when they pass a certain point, then a new piece of music kicks in, so it's a very different process as far as the mechanics of how the music is used and how the music works within a game, than in that film or TV.

What was the difference working on Far Cry 6 compared to previous Far Cry titles?

Eduardo: For me the difference was being audio director. I wasn't audio director in the previous Far Cry games. I was a team lead in co-development. In this one, I'm the man with a plan for the audio in the whole game. The responsibility is way bigger, in terms of what is the level of quality I want to achieve, what is the degree of immersion of the player I want to achieve. Things that weren't my main focus before, they became my main focus in this one.

I can only imagine how emotional it was for you to borrow from your personal experiences to come up with the feel, the sound of the game. How did you come up with everything?

Eduardo: I'm from Buenos Aires, Argentina. And this is a very Latino game, as I am. And it also touches the subject of a military dictatorship or oppressive regimes, which I lived through during my childhood and early teenage years.

It helped me to, you know, recall things from my past and put them there, and probably most of all, gave me a great perspective and understanding on the conflict, and how to translate that into a fantasy that players can really enjoy.

This is a great opportunity for the world to see what it was like back then. So, I worked we, the narrative team, and I say, "Okay when you have propaganda, this is how it sounded like." And I brought some archives and recording from those years to put them in the place, and we created that wonderful mechanism of validating of certain things as that was the real thing.

It wasn't that it dragged me to a dark place. Not at all. It dragged me to a place for a big chance for the players and people who are younger than me and not connected with that reality to see that through the eyes of authenticity.

Oman Bouali talks Far Cry 6 development update, conceptualizing its season pass, and in-game surprises

Did you also do the same from your end, Pedro?

Pedro: Yeah, for sure from my experience with the instruments from South America and also from listening to a lot of South American music. I grew up in Brazil and I studied a lot of tango and Caribbean music. I love salsa and all of the different variations of Caribbean music. It's been ingrained in me.

[In Far Cry 6], you're not going to hear salsa or montuno or anything specifically. The idea was to root the music in Latin and Caribbean music, but from there have a very modern, different, fresh, and unique take on what the music should be.

We used traditional instruments, but also a lot of soundscapes that I create here in my studio through processing organic sounds, synthesizers, and a lot of Latin American percussions. It's a very, very unique score. I think it's a blend of a lot of different elements. We tried to create something very interesting and very different from what's been heard before.

In what ways would you say that you were able to translate the story and feel for the Far Cry 6 score?

Pedro: What I love about video games in general is, like I said, they're both being created at the same time. One is feeding the other. At the same time, they were designing new things and sending it over to me then I was creating new music and sending it over to them, and they were playing it to the designers or adding it to the game.

So I think it's a it's a very interesting process where, what I'm doing is also influencing what they are doing and what they're doing is very much influencing how I work with the music.

In film and in TV that's unheard of. Even when you're working parallel with the editing, which happens a lot, the film has been shot already, the script was written a long time before, so you're not really feeding the process as much as you can be in a game, so it's really the ultimate collaborative process I feel.

How do music and sound play a role in storytelling and how do you make it effective?

Eduardo: Far Cry is a game that relies in an open world, set in a believable world. In this case, it's the island of Yara, and Latino Caribbean island.

One of the main things I tried to achieve was to set that environment, in a way, to make the player believe Yara is a real place. The division is in two main pillars—the diegetic and the extradiegetic sides. Diegetic is everything that belongs to the fictional world, and whatever is onscreen, like the musicians in the street, the music in the radio for cars and boom boxes and other places, and the songs that they play and other characters sing.

And the extradiegetic is the score from Pedro, for example, that needs to fit in that world, drive, and engage the player into the gameplay mechanics, but still relate to the world through the instruments.

Of course there are so many other aspects of audio, like voices and dialogue. The process of casting characters coming mostly from Latino roots, includes tweaking and working with the accent to make it feel real. The words in Spanish, we choose to leave in the game. Yeah, I think the audio makes made a big difference.

What would you say are the biggest challenges you faced on this project?

Eduardo: I think, it's the sheer size of the game. You know the amount of voices we have, the amount of music we have, the diversity of the biomes. Being sure that my vision is properly communicated and understood by the rest of the team. That we are lined up. And the audio can also merge with the gameplay experience, becoming one thing. This is probably the biggest challenge.

Pedro: When you're doing three hours of music you want the music to have some cohesion. You don't want each piece to be something completely different from the rest. But how do you keep three hours of music interesting and new and fresh for someone who's listening?

Yara is divided into three different regions—the western region, the central region and the eastern region. We really wanted to give a different feel for each of the regions musically, so we really dug into that.

Also the game experience should be fresh and new. Whenever you're playing a mission in the central region it's gonna sound different than the eastern region or the western region, while keeping a cohesion to the music. We tried to differentiate the worlds and really put a lot of thought and experimentation into it.

What does it take to create music for this industry and what pushes you to stick around?

Pedro: When kids always come to me and say, "Oh, I want to write music for film, I want to write music for games." It's a very different process. It's the process that works for me better than doing music for music. It's a very collaborative process where you're serving the image first and what the film or the game needs, and not just the beautiful music that you want to make.

Also it takes some detachment, for you to understand that sometimes the producer, the director, the audio director will say, "No, this is not exactly it." You think you've written the best piece of music in the world and then they're like, "I don't know, let's try something else."

It's the understanding that it's not about your music. It's about the ultimate project and the combined vision of the team, including yours. My opinion and my input is important, I hope it's always like that, otherwise I'll have no interest in being involved. Ultimately we're serving something bigger than just my music or just my creativity. It's understanding that it's a different process than [creating] music for music. You're serving a larger purpose with just the music you want to create.

Eduardo: I think it takes to love the games as a medium. In my case, it is a way of art and entertainment that can reach a lot of people in many different ways. And then see the which part of the industry, you would like to participate in. Are you good drawing, designing, thinking mechanics, doing audio, singing songs? I think the art and craft and tech of video games is so broad that almost every person can find their place—from journalism, to script writing, painting. It's a medium that welcomes almost everyone.

And you mentioned earlier about having an authentic voice for Far Cry 6. You can also see more POC stories in media everywhere from movies, TV shows, and even books. It's becoming more widespread. How does it feel to have more authentic voices in media and in gaming?

Eduardo: Feels fantastic! The world can see more mainstream media showing Latinos, Black people, indigenous people, and Asians in the western side of the world and it's great. I think we have to understand each other in a better way.

Far Cry 6 is available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on October 7, 2021. Pre-order the game here.

Stream the Far Cry 6 soundtrack below.