Stray Gods’ superstar cast helped shape its soundtrack

polygon.com:

Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical has a not-so-secret ace up its sleeve: its superstar cast.

Just a short glance at the credit list from Summerfall Studios’ new game reveals some impressive choices. The cast includes fan favorites like Laura Bailey and Janina Gavankar from Critical Role, as well as English actor Rahul Kohli, who appeared in Netflix’s Midnight Mass. The cast is an obvious flex on the talent front. What’s less obvious are the ways in which these cast members actually shaped the final game.

Music director Austin Wintory — the only video game composer whose work (on Journey) has been nominated for a Grammy before 2023 — told Polygon that Stray Gods’ actors didn’t “just come in, read it, and bail out.” They actually played a central role in shaping the final sound of their characters and the songs they sang. So much so that Wintory ended up going back and redoing the concepts for entire songs. These edits profoundly changed the game, given that Stray Gods is one giant interactive musical with its score front and center.

In Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical, players watch comic book-esque animated cutscenes where the characters sing out dramatic numbers. The player character is a woman named Grace who suddenly finds herself navigating the drama of Greek gods, whom she discovers out in the world secretly living among regular people. Stray Gods’crown jewel is a soundtrack that adapts to players’ decisions in real time. As the story unfolds, players can pick different lyrical options mid-song in timed events. The story and score change depending on the player’s choices.

Wintory started by creating scratch recordings with a band. He told Polygon that he and the team recorded the demos in an “intentionally