Turning Point: Fall of Liberty Soundtrack, Michael Giacchino, 2008
No doubt, Michael Giacchino‘s body of work includes some of game music’s best and most influential orchestral scores. Specifically, it’s the Medal of Honor soundtracks that secured his name in the annals of game soundtracks. However, Giacchino’s most fascinating and curious work of game music is another one: the Turning Point: Fall of Liberty soundtrack.
It’s surprising to see how little attention this score has attracted. Of course, the easiest explanation is the score album’s rarity. Never available commercially, the album came as a bonus item of the game’s Xbox 360 collector’s edition. Another reason why the Turning Point: Fall of Liberty soundtrack disappeared from view is the game’s commercial failure. But the most intriguing explanation for the obscurity of Giacchino’s work for Turning Point is the unusual nature of its sound world – both when compared with Giacchino’s other game scores, and Western game soundtracks in general. This is Giacchino at his most experimental and acerbic – both across his game and film scores.