Stéphane Picq Archives - The Greatest Game Music

Atlantis: The Lost Tales Soundtrack, Pierre Estève / Stéphane Picq, 1997

By the second half of the 1990s, French developer Cryo Interactive had found its niche: lavishly produced, Myst-style adventure games. The reception of these titles amongst critics remained somewhat ambivalent, but there’s no denying that Cryo’s approach was effective. Their biggest success might well have been Atlantis: The Lost Tales. Sporting panoramic 360-degree first-person views of the pre-rendered environments and significant amounts of pre-recorded speech, Atlantis was praised by reviewers for its visuals and strong atmosphere. At the same time, perceived gameplay flaws once again often resulted in average scores. That didn’t stop the game from selling more than 300,000 copies by late 1998, starting a franchise that would generate four more titles in future years and outlast Cryo itself.

Scoring duties for the Atlantis: The Lost Tales soundtrack went to the duo of Pierre Estève and Stéphane Picq. Picq had been Cryo’s main composer since the company’s very beginning, writing the entrancing music for its breakthrough hit Dune. Estève was a more recent addition to Cryo’s musical team, approaching the developer in 1995 after having worked as a rock musician and composer for French television and radio. His first project with Cryo turned out to be Dragon Lore II: The Heart of the Dragon Man. In the years to follow, Estève would create the music and sound effects for several other Cryo titles, even remaining with the Atlantis franchise after the developer had closed its doors in 2002. His anthropological interest in a vast range of musical cultures – witnessed by his solo albums Bamboo and Metal – was a perfect match for Picq’s eclectic composition style.

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Dune Soundtrack (PC), Stéphane Picq, 1992

It feels like early media adaptations of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi epic Dune were doomed to run into equally epic troubles during their production. There’s of course the convoluted story of how Dune finally reached cinema screens in 1984 after more than a decade of failed attempts, only to disappoint at the box office and alienate its own director. However, the first video game adaptation of Dune equally struggled to actually get made – to the point where publisher Virgin Games cancelled the game (and launched development of what would become Dune II), only to find out later that Cryo Interactive had secretly continued development. Thankfully, there was a happy ending to the story. Partially thanks to its innovative mix of adventure and strategy elements, Dune become a commercial hit, with 300,000 units sold by 1997, paving the way for Cryo’s expansion and prolific output throughout the 1990s.

In their assessments, contemporary reviewers put unusual emphasis on Stéphane Picq‘s soundtrack for Dune. Picq’s work soon became part of game music history when Virgin Records released an arrange album titled Dune – Spice Opera. At this point in time, album releases of Western game music were nearly unheard of, so for a European game soundtrack to receive an arrange album was entirely unexpected. The work clearly left its mark – when online game music criticism started to pop up in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Dune – Spice Opera garnered rave reviews for its unusual and creative aesthetics. It remains a fan favourite, its official release in Europe making it one of the first pieces of game music available for purchase by budding fans of the art form.