As a starting composer, I wanted to do "compose in the style of" challenges.

I was given three challenges from various friends of mine, one of them being compose in the style of Baldur's Gate 3 soundtrack.

Specifically the track: Twisted Force.

Personally I only have about 6 hours of gameplay (and soon to be more) in Baldur's Gate 3 so I wasn't too familiar with the soundtrack.

After multiple listens of the entire OST and researching a little bit about Borislav Slavov  (Bulgarian Composer for BG3 and multiple Larian Studios Titles), I was finally prepped to take a crack at this track.

Twisted Force creates a sense of strategy and dread, with a dark, almost creepy god/alien like vibes. The track is played during battles with creepy enemies like mind flayers.

I wanted to create the same theme by usage of staccato cellos and double bass, and to create a since of eerieness with scrapy, atonal sounds on the cello and screechy pan flute instrument.

A common thing I noticed in twisted force is how the vocals and instrumentation do a call and response: the vocals would play a melody, and then the instruments would play a melody in response.

I wanted to create something similar but I am not much of a singer.

I was able to record multiple tracks of my vocals single a simple vowel phrase, and have the strings be the response. I also recorded myself doing whispering phrases to create almost a dark occult vibe.

These vocals really give an Eldritch taste to the track that I was looking for.

With the use of low-end orchestral instrumentation, atonal scratchy melodies, and creepy whisper/war like vocals, I was able to recreate a dark, cinematic battle piece that I was hoping to achieve similar to twisted force.