 Hello everyone and welcome back to Enter the Ether, the new podcast all about the upcoming third person mobile ethereal, Clash of Souls. I'm your host, TheMangus. Joining me as always, you all know him, you all love him, you all want some more of him from the beautiful, mile high, windy city of brotherly love, it's Jelly Knees. Brr, brr, brr, brr, brr. Every week, these just get higher and higher amped up. By the time the game comes out, I'm gonna be some like mythical creature. It's gonna be great. Oh man, Mangus, the intro is always top notch. But with us this week, we have Yuji Dark, who is in charge of music for the game, or at least a section of it. And Dark, go ahead and just tell us what you work on primarily and what your day-to-day looks like with ethereal. Yeah, so with ethereal, I write for the Lord Department and I run the music department, working with several different composers and making sure that they're on assignments that fit them best and making sure that the game's music just blows you away, because music and games is important to me and having the right feeling in the game matters. So yeah, I like to make sure that the music definitely holds up to as good as this game is gonna be. Right, well man, it's good to hear. I'm really excited to talk to you about this. Music is incredibly important, I think, to any game. I mean, a lot of us are old Paragon refugees. You just hear adrenaline, the old Paragon music, just a hint of it, and it just brings back memories, and that just shows you how important music is to a game. But before we get into talking to music with Lord Dark, what we're gonna do is there was a new development fun fact along with a blog, and it was about the jungle objectives. Jelly, you wanna talk about these jungle objectives we got to see. I would love to, as a jungle main, this was the post that I've been waiting for. I've been sitting there like, okay, yeah, these are cool, but I want jungle myths and I want jungle information. That's all I care about, and we got it because they gave a ton of information about this. So it starts out with a gif of two wyverns and a tropos, being the larger scale neutral objectives on the map. Both of them, both wyverns, it looks like an ice wyvern and a fire wyvern have their own cave or something that they're in, some kind of structure that they're in, which looks incredible. And then a tropos has this giant cavern-looking thing, and all of it looks really good. They look like they've got diverse attacks and a mix of different things that we'll have to work our way around in order to kill them and get their buff or whatever it's going to be. They didn't go into too much detail about what specifics you would get from killing each of these objectives, but they did go into just kind of general info about the jungle and those neutral boss monsters. So there's 18 camps scattered around the jungle, which is a huge number. And I'm curious if that's 18 per side or if that's just 18 total on the entire map. Yeah, I didn't think of that. Say again? Yeah, I didn't think of that. Some of them are going to give you buffs, so I assume we're gonna have the standard buffs that you would see in MOBA genre. So red and blue buff, which they talk about later, but they also mention a purple and a green buff, which will be really interesting to see what those are and how you're able to acquire those. Green buff reminds me of Paragon, of course, getting that shield, but it also could be a health regen. We did see those green buffs in the extra life event, so maybe that asset just poured it over there, but we don't know for sure. In purple buff, they don't give us any indication about what that could do, but it looks like it's gonna be a really impactful jungle that has a lot of different options with different things you can do for your team or for yourself as the jungler. I can't wait. I'm so stoked to get in there and find pathing and do the most optimal routes all the way through and all that kind of stuff. What did you think, Mangus? Oh, it all looked really amazing. One of the things from way, way, way back is they talked about there were taking some influence from Dark Souls and the only way I could think of that they could have souls like Combat in the game would be with the jungle minions and I think that's, if you watch them and they did indicate to us that, especially Atropus's abilities are kind of placeholder right now, they may not, what you see may not make it into the game final product, but it does look like a lot of stuff that you can dodge and it'll be a lot more skill-based jungling than just sitting there beating on minions while they beat on you until you finally kill them and move on. So you'll actually have to employ a little bit of skill in the jungle. Dark, do you wanna weigh in on this at all? So as far as anything along those lines go with actual gameplay or GDA stuff, probably won't weigh in too much. But I will definitely say that, yeah, I'm super excited for it. I mean, being someone who worked on it and as much as a theory means to me, it definitely, I'm just excited as every other fan out there, so. And before you were telling us, Dark, that you were also part of the lore team originally and were you involved in any of the lore behind these Wyverns or a Tropos or anything like that or anything you can share with us at the very least? No, so I actually was not involved with any of that. So since I joined, I've worked on Aron. Zero is one of mine. Oh, so mind you, lore, lore though, that's a pretty important distinction. Lore-wise, they were mine. Those characters were designed before I ever joined the team. But I handled writing their lore, and then Malaya, Marina, Kalos, like, I've worked on all of their lore, but for the most part, I help out with that stuff. The only two characters that I've actually written the lore for were Aron and Zero for now. Right on. It's kind of cool that you work on both sides of that, so you get a better feel. I would think you would have a better feel of what their music should sound like and feel like or the different situations and whatnot. And leading into that, let's move straight into talking about music. And Dark brought us a fun little thing. We already listened to it. We're gonna play it for you right now, and I'm just gonna go full screen with this so that you guys can fully enjoy it. If you wanna watch our initial reactions to it, it'll be at the end, but Dark, won't you set it up? What did you bring for us? So I got permission to bring you guys the Dante theme because all the characters are going to have themes for the character. So I got permission for you guys to listen to the theme song for Dante. All right, guys, enjoy the theme song for Dante and we'll be right back. Hope you enjoyed that. We, it blew us away. It was not what we were expecting. Absolutely amazing. I was expecting something a little more fantasy driven and it was just, it was not that. So, Dark, what can you tell us about the Dante theme music here? So for Dante, definitely it was the right approach. When you think about, it was kind of what you were saying earlier when you said it was kind of a good idea to have someone who was already involved with lore and writing to step in and take up the mantle to help music move along. For the same exact reason you were saying, like music wise, you want each song, especially character themes. You want that to 100% fit that character's vibe. And for me, it's that important, I'm just gonna say like badass moment. Like when you see someone walking in slow motion to their theme and you're like that, that's that. You just know that that song was made for that person, and that's what we try and do with every character. Like, can you see that person walking to that music? Can you see them completely annihilating waves of minions to that music? And or, even just walking is fine too in some cases, but it definitely needs to feel like it fits. And so all the music kind of comes from that place where we kind of like really go in depth with making sure that if you get put on assignment for that character, you know that character's lore, you know? So if I assign a character to any of my team, I go through and we make sure that they fully know the lore for that character and that their inspiration is being directly derived from what they know about that character. And then furthermore, after they come up with a rendition for the song, I'll still go back, listen to it and make sure that from my expertise with the lore department that it fits to me and I make sure that any tweaks that need to be made are made. So that way, you know, by the time you're getting the song, it's definitely not a one try, you know? It's like we've been through multiple renditions until we get it to a point where just like you guys and your reaction to it when you first heard it, like we all smile the same way, listening to each other's music after we write it, you know? Um, it's the same, like I'd say like honestly, the the R on theme was one of the ones that is super important to me, you know? Cause yeah, okay. So I'm going to try and stick away from saying anything. So in general, in general, just who R on is, I needed a perfect track for that, you know? And so if you were to go listen to the R on track after this, which of course I can't let you, but one day, but nevertheless, it's a completely different vibe, completely different composer, completely different elements, you know? It's going to be a completely different feeling. So, you know, you're getting this barrage of music that's all going to make you feel different. And if it should make you feel sad, then I'm going to make sure that you feel sad. If it's supposed to make you feel excited, I'm going to make sure it makes you feel excited. You know, it, I want it to hold that weight for everyone. Um, you know, cause I know when I play video games and I hear certain tracks, I mean, I mean, come on. Everyone has that one video game that made them cry. I'm just saying, like everybody has that one moment in video game history where you got completely destroyed by a scene. And, you know, behind every good scene of a video game or movie is a soundtrack that just completely took your soul and rearranged it. So, that's super awesome. And so I do think I speak for the entire community after listening to that, uh, Dante theme that you showed us are on track. When? Yeah, exactly. No, but I listened to the Dante theme. It felt there was never a moment listening to it that I was like, oh, no, that's not Dante. Like that wasn't something I could see Dante listening to or saying like, and I love the little blurbs of Dante's voice lines in the middle of it. They just felt so Dante, for lack of a better way to put it, like it just it was so brilliant. And I can't wait to hear the rest of it, the others, the other themes or future themes or the games theme even, things like that. Like I'm just so excited after hearing that now. I just, it's incredible. It completely took me by surprise because I was so used to the sort of high fantasy that we've heard so far, like in the demo and stuff like that. And then this was just completely out of left field, took me totally by surprise. And you mentioned that you have like several, several composers of very different backgrounds. Do you compose any of the music yourself, Dark? Or do you just collaborate and like produce it? Yeah, so unfortunately, I don't get to, you know, actually create any of it myself. And that's not for the fact of me not knowing music. I just don't have a proper studio setup. But if I did, I very well would compose plenty of the music because honestly, I've always loved music. Music has been in my life for a long time. And that's part of the reason I strive so hard to take the position in the first place and really make the music department what it is. Because like I said, it is really important to me, but back to the question in general. Yeah, no, I do mostly just produce. So they give me, okay, so basically if we were to start fresh, like I said, I would take the song or take the character if you will or whatever we need. And I know my team. I know where their strengths are and what their weaknesses are. And I take those and I say, okay, who would be best to do this? And then I handed to that person. And like I said earlier, I make sure that they're familiar with the lore in the case of character themes anyway. When it comes to the other stuff, we play around with like other things and making sure that we have good examples and ideas for what we wanna move forward with. Inspirations, good inspiration for like the way we wanna go about it. But in the case of character themes, I would hand them the character, then I'd make sure that they know the lore. And then after that, I normally say, all right, like for example, like this character, let me say, so this is an example. I'm not particularly aiming towards any character. But for example, if the character had to do with fire, right, I would want elements of fire in there. I'd want you to hear maybe like the sound of wood cracking while being burned. Or just something that makes you feel like there's fire around you. And I would take elements like that or even pieces from their past. And we'd find a way to kind of weave that in to what we're already doing. And so I give them that bit of advice. And then I let them go. And I let them go come back with, you know, whatever they can give me. And then after I give it another listen, I critique it through that. And whatever I feel like it's missing from there, like whether or not maybe they happen to add like a violin in there. And the violin's pitch is too high, you know? I'd be like, all right, maybe let's change the tempo and let's go ahead and just drop that down a couple octaves, you know, and see how we feel about that. And then they'll go ahead, they'll make the next rendition and they'll hit it at me again. And if it works, then great. And if it doesn't work, then we keep going back to the drawing board until we find that perfect company. So it's a lot of, you know, going back and forth on the processing like that. And yeah, so that's, I do a lot of like critiquing, essentially, but yeah. So you're actually, as you're talking, you're covering a lot of the questions that I already had for you, but one of the things I wanted to know, so we've established how important music is for games. What are some of your favorite scores from past games that you've played? So two that came to mind right away pretty easily because they're honestly probably my two favorite soundtracks. And I don't know if I could honestly even tell you which one I would pick above the other, but Kingdom Hearts will always have like a special place. The Kingdom Hearts soundtrack, like, you know, I still have those songs on my Spotify and listen to them almost every day. So, you know, the soundtrack is good, but other than that, Detroit become human. That was probably like, it's honestly, it's one of my all-time favorite games blew my mind. And like, I've played that game so many times for like, you know, it's funny because I have a YouTube channel and like a game on my YouTube channel and I've played it several times on live stream. And I mean, luckily people didn't get sick of it, but you know, it's choice games, of course. When you get to make your own choices throughout the game, you can change the way the story plays out. So it makes for good content. But without the content, it's just so many, so many good feelings created from the soundtrack of that game. So it's kind of hard because like I said, while Kingdom Hearts holds a special place in my heart, like Detroit become human was just absolutely breathtaking. What about you, Jelly? You got any? The one that comes to mind for me that I remember sitting there, and it's kind of like, Dark was saying that there's two actually, that it'd be hard to pick between the two. Destiny 2, the main, the original story soundtrack. I don't know what it was, but I just sat there pretty much every mission and going like, dang, like the soundtrack helps amplify this moment to the next level. And I think that's where music and games should go. What dependent on the feeling that they're trying to accomplish in that scene, the music should help amplify that, not take away from it or not just be there either. I feel like there are so many games that, yeah, there's music. You don't recognize it, you don't remember it, you don't do anything like that. But when a game has music that you remember, that sticks out so much more in that scene or in that part of the game, whatever it may be. So Destiny 2 or the PS4 Spider-Man game, same kind of thing. Is that just amplified moments for me, that I just got so lost in it between the music and the scene itself, that it was just incredible. Maygoose, anything come to mind for you? Greece, definitely Greece. Not the musical, like GRIS, the game, Greece. I don't know if you guys have ever played it, but if I was to ever call any game a work of art, it is an actual work of art. Like it is an emotional journey when you play that game. It's just like a 2D side scroll and puzzle platform of it. If you ever played it, you know exactly what I'm talking about, but the music really blended in with the rest of what they had going with Greece to make that truly memorable experience overall. And yeah, it's kind of weird that music seems like one of those things that people just wouldn't care about or wouldn't notice, but man, you really do notice when the music for something is really good. When we did that play test and I started to hear that music as we were coming into the login screen, I was like, fuck yeah, like this is good, this is good shit. Yeah, and when you and I were trying to get footage after the play test to put on and to the ether and all that, you and I talked about the music in the background and like just how fitting it was or the theme we were in, it was incredible, so. Have you guys heard it here first? Mangoose is secretly a huge Greece, the musical fan. Right? Honestly, that's where my mind went to and the first thought I had was, oh, we get to pick movies too. Is that Olivia Newton-John, man? Yeah, no, I love Destiny though. That's another one, that's a good point. I'm like a huge Destiny fan and I've been playing for a long time. I definitely slowed down more recently because obviously my time is pretty occupied. But nevertheless, I definitely love Destiny, though I will say if I had to pick any Destiny time, it would have been Destiny Wonder and Taken King Easy because Doric's music was pinnacle of what I want to hear and I will say definitely inspiration was drawn there too. So the Taken King music for Orix, like just opening up the login screen after all that or even the one for Orix's trailer, which was phenomenal. It's definitely one of the better soundtracks for video game work. And I think that kind of proves the point of what we've been talking about is hearing each of us talk about our favorite soundtracks from video games. I think we each had that glimmer, right? It was the thing of like you can pick out a specific moment that the music was so impactful that you sat there and you can remember that moment, you remember the feeling, like I'm getting chills just talking about it. Like it's just, it's one of those things that I think is so subtle, but could have such a huge impact in and of itself. Towards that end though, I do want to ask you since we know about themes being a thing for each myth, is there one that is that you guys have done already that was particularly harder than the others or was just more complicated? Like can you get into any of that? Somewhat. I don't know if I could get into the why, but I definitely will say that R on for me, R on is probably one of this that is a bit harder because I have, there's like a specific idea of what needs to be achieved with R on, based off of his lore, based off of Zero's lore, just the lore in general, it demands a lot of R on song and it needs to be to the extent where it definitely, definitely there's a lot of emotion that I want to be able and I'm not going to say which emotions, but there's a lot of emotion that I definitely want to make sure is felt through that song. So for me, character theme-wise anyway, because you did only say character theme-wise. Oh man. That would be the hardest character theme, but with that said, because I'm sure what your next question could be, the only other one that I'd say would be even, well actually, it's been harder, would be the cinematic song. The track that we plan on using for the cinematic is definitely the hardest one. That one has to leave a lasting impression too. Exactly, and that's why, because it needs to be, it needs to hit so much. It definitely has like a very high pedestal and I know you mentioned White Sand before, so I know that you know about that. And yeah, we've worked very hard to achieve a very good cinematic song. So that is definitely the hardest track that I've ever had to do for this. That's awesome. I was going to ask you who your favorite myth was and who you plan to play, but I think I have an idea of who that might be by now. You might, but with that said, it, funny enough, so I have a very specific play style, right? You know, especially being a MOBO player, being an ex-paragon player and being a SMITE player, I have a very specific thing that I go for when I game and as much as obviously, I'm sure you were thinking the answer was Aron because obviously, you know, I have him everywhere, but nevertheless, I'd say it's probably zero that I'm going to end up in. Oh, okay. That's because for me, for me, I think the Sky Slayer thing is definitely more my vibe, but nevertheless, Aron holds a special place in my heart. He was the first myth I was ever handed, so I definitely am going to play several games with him at some point. Right on. Jilly, what else you got? Any questions? I mean, so now that you say that you have a very specific play style and that zero fits that play style and that that's who you're going to play, what are zero's abilities? Because, or I guess I should say that I know you can't answer that. So let me, I'll retract that. I won't even try to get that out of you, but what's your play style? That's not a, an ethereal question. That's just a dark question. Just hypothetically, what's your play style? Fair enough. So, so, okay. So I also have to retract part of my statement then. It's not just my play style. In general, just style-wise as well. So like for example, one of my favorite characters in Smite is Thanato. So the, the, you know, the whole wings and like, you know, death aspect of it with like being able to float around and stuff, you know, not saying anything about zero just in general saying like- Just the aesthetic, the general aesthetic of that. Exactly, exactly. It started as aesthetic. And then it was like, no, I actually really do love playing jungle. And I found that honestly, I myself do tend to play jungle more often. So as far as, you know, this is a hard question to answer. No, you're fine. I can't, I can't get me answering things, but now I'm going to ask this. This is an enter the ether exclusive. Zero's going to have wings and he's going to kill people. We did it. We figured it out, man, Goose. Congratulations. Nobody knew that before. Yeah, you never would have known that without me. But no, nevertheless, the wings, the wings are, they're definitely a fun aspect as far as style goes. And honestly, I'm not going to lie. When I first pick up a game, I do pick my player based on style. I'm not even going to lie. And then, then there are times like where I sit there and I'm like, oh God, this is a bad decision. This character might like, like with smite, there's plenty of characters that I'm like, oh yeah, that's definitely, oh, I think, okay. It was Hades back in the day. I think Hades was like the first one I ever picked up. And I was like, yeah, he looks like a bad ass. I'm gonna love Hades. And then it's like, no, no, I'm not enjoying. And so, so Hades did not fit my playing style. Yeah, so after a lot of experimentation, then it was like, oh, Thanatos actually looks really awesome. That was of course, after I bought all the characters, but you know, I thought he looked really cool. And then I was like, okay, he also has OP abilities, but it always starts with looks. And then it's like, oh, okay, the abilities also work. But yeah, nevertheless, I think that both zero and in general are probably gonna be the two that I lean more toward at first. And then who knows? I mean, there are- True. You never know. I mean, I helped develop certain aspects of the game and I still might change my mind later. You never know who you're gonna end up playing until you actually get a feel for it and might like someone else better. So, but definitely- And it even goes into the future with that same element of, we really only know about 14-ish myths for ethereal right now, but it's assumed that there's going to be many more, right? So what if you really think zero's your aesthetic and then somebody new comes out and you're like, no, actually, that one over there, that's more me and you switch over to that one. I think part of the exciting thing for me about ethereal is the newness of it all, but also just the potential at the same time. And hearing people like you talk about just the themes and music behind it all shows the kind of work and dedication that's going into ethereal. And the attention to ethereal. Yeah, 100%. Oh yeah. And I will say that's spot on. Like we, I mean, the whole team, cause of course talking to me, I mean, I am like someone who is a part of two different teams, you know, and as a part of both of those teams, like they're both highly driven on the attention to detail aspect and making sure that, you know, and of course I'm not saying anything about the other departments cause the other departments are just the same exact way. Like they're all very detail oriented and making sure that everything is as amazing as it should be, you know? And I've seen a couple of your previous episodes and it's like highly ambitious, it's a word that you like to use, but nevertheless, I'd prefer to be highly ambitious cause I think that ethereal, okay, let me state in my opinion, ethereal is definitely, you know, it's a cornerstone. It's definitely what attracted it to me in the first place. You know, as an ex-paragon player when I first heard of the company and the very first, you know, the very first thing I heard about it, like, you know, the YouTube videos I watched back then and, you know, so the long time ago, but, you know, back then, the very first videos I ever watched, I was like, this, this is gonna be that next level MOBA that is just completely different from anything we've ever seen before. And I got obsessed with it, you know? And I followed them on everything, you know? And that's how I made it onto the team in the first place, you know, followed them on everything. And the moment I got my shot, try enjoying the team, I did everything in my power to make myself, you know? And I'm super happy I did it because honestly, I never in a million years would have figured that I would have landed this, you know, position to be working on a game that I absolutely, like, already adored the company without even meeting any amazing team that we have on this company. But now, having met everyone working on the game, like, it really is like a dream come true, you know? It definitely going from where I was before to actually working on a video game and creating what we're creating, it definitely is a very strong feeling. So I'm going to make sure that everyone feels the power of my feelings through that. Right, one man, that is a noble goal. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's why so many Paragoners have kind of transitioned to Ethereum is not because it's using any of the assets like the Parazombies, but it's Paragon tried to be that trailblazer just a little bit further outside the MOBA genre and do their own thing a little bit. And I think that enticed a lot of people. And I think we all see that in Ethereum at the same time of that ambition, the trailblazing, all the new things that they want to do and are excited for that in and of itself, in addition to all the work that you guys are doing to make it wonderful, like the themes and the art and all of those things. So I can't wait to hear more of your stuff. Everybody's so excited to re-walk that same path, but with Ethereum, we've got a brand new path to walk on. So I don't, and it's further down the road already laid out for us by Paragon. So I think that's why we're all about undying games in Ethereum, man. Well said, Jelly, well said. We are going to have to wrap it up though. I think we've gone, yeah, we've gone pretty long here. Dark, any final comments? Anything you want to say to the fans out there? Honestly, we're super excited to bring this game to you, to, you know, all of the fans out there, everyone who's been waiting patient and just know that it is in good hands and we are absolutely striving forward to make the best possible game that we can. I know that we're going to succeed. Jelly, anything final? So I mean, I guess I just have one final question, just to kind of, I guess, sum it all up, between Dante's theme and what you explained about Oran's theme and you wanting it to be perfect and just going into the details of what goes in with the other, with the composers and coming back to you and all the revisions and everything, when does the theory will come out? I didn't even see that one coming. You caught me on that one. I did, I saw it coming, 110%. Dark, this whole time has been waiting for that. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, great, that's great. All right, so, Dark, you said you had a YouTube channel. Guys, check out his YouTube channel, I'll have it linked in the description below. Dark, if you can send me a link to your channel, that would be absolutely amazing. Anything else you want to plug? Oh no, that's it for now. Oh, I mean, we do have a TikTok now for Ethereum. I don't know if you guys have seen that. Yep, already following. Same here. Perfect, perfect. Then you guys already know that one. So yeah, other than that, yeah. No, and I greatly appreciate the shout out on the channel. I don't know, Jelly, anything got the plug? This week, I went back through the Extra Life footage for the Q&A and copied it all down. It's like two and a half hours of Q&A. So I went through it all. I'm going to be releasing a video covering all the questions we asked and what they answered to sometime this week, probably the same day as this goes out. So look out for that on my YouTube channel. What about you, Mangoose? I'm looking forward to that because I don't remember everything that was said. I think this week, my project this week, I think I've literally forgotten more about Ethereum than most people know. And I mean that literally, I've actually forgotten it. So I need to really go back through and separate things, things that were shown to me in confidence that I can't show to anybody else and not talk about. Just put that over here. Things that were shown to me specifically for my channel but are allowed to be shown to everyone, put that in the column here and then the shit that everybody else does. Like, I need to separate that out because I'm doing this show. It's very difficult for me not to release information that may not, like the wyverns, I knew about those for a while. I almost talked about them in one other episode and I'm glad they finally released those. So I can say what they were. But that's gonna wrap it up for this week, folks. It's a very interesting episode. I knew as soon as we started talking to Dark that it was going to be very interesting dude. Thank you very much for coming out here. And we do know that this is a very ambitious MOBA but with that high amount of ambition is a high amount of potential. So I hope you can all join us as we enter the ether. Do you wanna listen to this real quick, Gu? So we can play it and then talk about it. It's a little, it's a little, oh, oh. I was about to say base drop and then there really was a base drop. This is pretty fucking badass. Dude, this feels like a wrestling match intro that somebody's walking into. Really done it now. Oh my God. This is like not what I was expecting and it's awesome. Yeah. Are you done listening to it, Jelly? Three seconds. Yeah, there we go. Oh my God. Okay, Jelly, your new task, you gotta come up with a Dante dance. Oh my God. That was incredible. Man, go.