EA Bright Light Archives

Welp, this writer didn’t have a festive tune in their backlog of video game music, but this #WeeklyGameMusic, composed by James Hannigan comes close enough. To Catch an Owl is a video-game-original track for the book-to-movie-to-game adaptation, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, developed by EA UK. It’s a magical and celebratory tune fitting of the upcoming holidays, and manages to capture the movie soundtrack’s spirit.

Note: this writer does acknowledge the author of the Harry Potter series is notoriously transphobic. While the composer of this track is completely unrelated to J.K. Rowling, it should be stated that transphobia is immoral and wrong. This writer does not intend to promote such a position.

Within a few chapters of the fifth entry in the seven book (or eight movie) series, titular character Harry Potter and his non-magical cousin Dudley get attacked by the depression-inducing Dementors, well outside of the wizarding realm and within our realistic one. Thus setting the tone for what’s going to be a dark entry amongst the series, Harry uses magical spells Dudley can’t perceive to ward off the Dementors in self-defense. The problem? It’s illegal for an underage wizard student (which Harry himself is just into the fifth year of a seven year long career) to use magic in front of muggles, or normies by wizard lingo. This immediately kicks off a number of lawsuits Harry is forced to navigate, and while the ruling manages to fall into his favor, puts Harry into a legally precarious position as he enters Hogwarts wizarding school for the fifth year.

While story-wise, the video game adaptation of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix doesn’t stray from this story, it’s gameplay takes a much more interesting approach to the politically oppressive atmosphere the book presents. In short, Order of the Phoenix is an open-world game where players utilizes gestures on the right-stick of the controller to cast various spells. Said spells are used to handle various tasks given by minigames, or simple environmental puzzles to unlock new secrets in the labyrinthine Hogwarts. Exploration is key to both progressing the story and unlocking new abilities and upgrade to our hero as he navigates this magically dangerous place.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was released for the (wait for it…) Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, Wii, Nintendo DS, Game Boy Advance, PlayStation Portable, PC, and Mac (phew!)

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Regulars of #WeeklyGameMusic know I often find some rather obscure game music pretty often. Here’s one from a little-known sandbox game called Create, developed by EA Bright Light. That’s right, we’re checking out Electronic Arts game music this week! Ian Livingstone’s piece, Skate Park Shuffle, is a bit corporate at the beginning, but soon mellows out to a rather calming (and more interesting) conclusion.

A bit like the The Incredible Machine, the most game-like aspect of Create involves the player to use the items and tools available in the pre-made levels to push, nudge, and navigate an object from point A to point B. Much of these levels take place in the 2D plane to provide a simpler interface, though lanes of depth can be added like LittleBigPlanet. And of course, much like LittleBigPlanet, Create allowed players to create and share levels online, though as of this writing, the servers has long been shut down.

Create was released on PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox 360, PC, and Mac. As far as this writer can tell, there does not appear to be a way to purchase the game online easily, but the official game page is available here: ea.com/games/create

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Tag: EA Bright Light

#WeeklyGameMusic: To Catch an Owl (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix)

#WeeklyGameMusic: Skate Park Shuffle (Create)