Music has always played a big role in CRPGs, and that hasn’t changed since the genre’s beginning. The booming sound of Baldur’s Gate 2‘s intro theme, the haunting low-key background music in the original Fallout games…music can have a profound effect on the feelings we experience when playing a game. Few know this as well as Inon Zur, a musician who has one of the largest portfolios of anyone in his career. Having created music for the Fallout series, Baldur’s Gate< 2, Warhammer and Everquest, he now gets to add another job to his resume: Composer for Sword Coast Legends

Independent developers n-Space and Digital Extremes announced today that Hollywood Music Award-winning and two-time BAFTA nominated composer Inon Zur is composing the original score for the studios’ upcoming Sword Coast Legends™, a party-based PC RPG set in the Dungeons & Dragons Forgotten Realms universe from Wizards of the Coast. Known for powerful and melodic orchestrations, Zur’s critically acclaimed scores have been heard in some of the most popular and well regarded video games of all time, including Dragon Age: Origins, Baldur’s Gate II: Throne of Bhaal, Icewind Dale II, Fallout 3, EverQuest and many others.

Recorded in Prague, the Czech Republic by The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, the rich orchestral soundtrack for Sword Coast Legends helps bring the game’s numerous, well-known, and highly varied locations, environments and encounters to life from the raw emotion captured in Luskan Streets, to the uneasy anticipation of the Evermoors, and the heroic main theme. The official orchestral soundtrack for Sword Coast Legends will be available with the game later this year.

This is a big move for n-Space’s Infinity-Engine-wannabe, since it will undoubtedly give it a similar aural experience to those older Dungeons & Dragons games whose fans they hope to entice. Hopefully this is the start of a new era of D&D computer games.