Mexico City /
Mexico 1921: a deep dreameither arrived at the platform Steam and at the end of the year it will Xbox. A vintage mexican video game which tells the adventure of a journalist who seeks to unmask the murderer of President Álvaro Obregón in a post-revolution world.
Is one of the first video games to represent Mexico at the Cannes Festival in conjunction with the Maquinitas festival, acclaimed at the Berlin Amaze Fest, and was named Game of the Year at Pixelatl.
Developed by Mácula Interactive, they were guided by research and the objective of giving their own immersive version of what they consider Mexican based on a little-mentioned historical moment.
“It is a time that we consider crucial to investigate because it ended up defining the country as we know it today and that is rarely seen represented in a video game“said Paola Vera, director of the video game in an exclusive interview with MILLENNIUM.
Paola said that it has been a long journey of more than three years with the support of historians who sought to investigate current issues such as freedom of the press well corruption is the main antagonist.
It has political burden but not from a partisan ideology, but rather from art and culturea seeks to create a space for reflection in a story that takes place mainly in the center of Mexico City.
When many current video games seek realism in the visual design of the video game, The team opted for a more stylized design with characters with oval eyes and large hands inspired by the art of David Alfaro Siqueiros, and skies that evoke the landscapes of José María Velasco; They wanted art to also speak of national identity and be represented in 3D as has rarely been seen.
“There are many things that we cannot say in a dialogue, when you want to capture the national identity it is best transmitted through art,” said Paola Vera.
A collaboration with the Museum of Popular Art allowed objects from the time to be scanned to model them and introduce them into the video game; In it you can also read real newspapers from those years thanks to the National Newspaper Archive.
Carlos and Mike’s music
Mácula interactive started the project as a documentary three-part focused on discovering the entire process behind making video games. By interviewing people within the industry they met composers Carlos Ramírez and Mike Fortuknown in the world of video game music for collaborating with international brands such as Pokémon, League of Legends and Unity.
Mike and Carlos they told MILLENNIUM that They began to collaborate on Mexico 1921: A Deep Dream as consultantsbut they became more involved in the project until they composed the music for the soundtrack, since over three years they had weekly meetings with the management team and historians that ranged from the general thesis of the game to the context of more levels. specific.
“First it was a musical creative phase and then something technical that was incredible for us to get into the world of programming and integration with the Mácula team.” Mike talked about this joint creative process.
After arduous musical research, throughout the soundtrack that is now available on Spotify They sought to mix different influences from the post-revolutionary era present in different parts of the country to convey what was heard in the Mexico of a hundred years ago.
The precision in sound design It goes from moments with pre-Hispanic overtones to then taking influences from Manuel M. Ponce and Silvestre Revueltas mixed with synthesizers in a contemporary field.
The production method with constant feedback allowed the composers to make proposals, one that transcended was to include the noise of relevant objects in the plot to musicsuch is the case of typewriters and cameras, as Carlos commented:
“There is music within the game that seeks to challenge the player more than the character; Including these objects facilitates the creation of an atmosphere and at the same time serves as a narrative nod.”
In the words of the musicians, the timbral palettes sought to capture the antagonistic part in a decentralized way in a character as the Imperial March of Darth Vader and that would advance according to the story and dialogues of the video game:
“It is not only a theme of man against man but also man against system, that is why we decided that the antagonistic theme would be a series of harmonic rules that corrupted the other musical motifs, an unnatural part that unbalances the global sound system,” the composers said.
Mexico 1921: A Deep Dream It is a project that marked them forever, in the case of Carlos allowed him to collaborate professionally with his parents for the first time, since His father Carlos Ramírez Guzmán is a prominent musician in the Chamber Orchestra of Fine Arts, and his mother is the soprano Rosario Dávila.
Mike Fortu stated that they are grateful that in this project they were allowed to make proposals, something unusual in the industry and to which Carlos added:
“When you start in this career we all want to make great video games, but with experience you realize that in independent video games there is more creative freedom to propose things to the studio and have them listen to you, unlike other projects that, although they have their own thing, do not. “You can debate what Pikachu is going to sound like.”
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