The music of Dragon Age: Origins, a role-playing video game developed by BioWare and published by Electronic Arts in 2009, was composed and arranged by Israeli American music composer Inon Zur and American singer-songwriter Aubrey Ashburn, and performed by the Northwest Sinfonia. The game features an orchestral soundtrack with a choir, used both in-game and during cutscenes. The score also features contributions from Simon Pressey, who was Audio Director at BioWare and acted as musical supervisor for the project, as well as vocal performances by Ashburn who had since become a frequent collaborator with Zur. Several vocal tracks were produced for the game, which were all performed by Ashburn. Zur intentionally made most of the soundtrack feel "dark" in synergy with the theme of Origins.
The official Dragon Age: Origins soundtrack album was released on November 3, 2009 and later released digitally on December 8, 2009. It won two awards at the Hollywood Music in Media Awards & Conference show held on November 19, 2009. An 18 track album was included in the Collector's Edition of the game which was released on November 3, 2009. The original video game score for the Dragon Age: Origins – Leliana's Song downloadable content pack was released on October 25, 2010.
Production and composition
Origins features an original score. The game's score accompanies the gameplay and alerts players at specific times such as combat sequences. Inon Zur explained in an interview with GameSpot that the main role of video game music, like its movie and television counterparts, is to support the emotional element and to enhance the drama. He said in another interview that he was enthusiastic about being asked to score the Dragon Age franchise by BioWare "because it was known to be a high profile project from a great developer", and it featured the elements he enjoys writing for, noting that in the role playing game (RPG) genre he can contribute a lot in his style to complement the game. Zur described the process of composing a scene for the series as follows: he starts by identifying and focusing on what exactly the characters in the scene are feeling, and then move on to other details such as their location, number of hostile enemies, the pace of the narrative, and so on. He would then proceed to write the score with the information he is provided, and at the same time he is open to other information such as the color and/or flavor of the setting. Zur described the creative process as being "a very close collaboration with a lot of creative freedom" and noted that the score for Origins was about creating its universe and establish a style for the game. They had to cover a lot of different stories for the game, which featured six possible origin stories for the player-created protagonist, and he had to go through many routes to find the origins and what they are. He said he plays the games he is hired to compose to comprehend its tempo and rhythm, which would inform his experience when it comes to tailoring his score. He noted that the story of a video game is the biggest influence in his score writing; he praised the narrative for Dragon Age as being very effective and immersive, noting that there are "lots of human elements, none of the characters are perfect, even the hero".