Raw Power Games has released the fifth developer diary for Chronicles: Medieval, offering a closer look at the music and sound design behind its upcoming open-world medieval sandbox. Titled The Sound of Chronicles: Medieval, the new episode features composer Knut Avenstroup Haugen and senior audio designer Troels Jørgensen, who explain how period-inspired instrumentation, atmospheric compositions, and dynamic battlefield audio are being developed to bring the game’s medieval world to life. The developer diary also introduces four work-in-progress soundtrack pieces, giving players an early opportunity to hear the musical direction of a game that combines character progression, army recruitment, political alliances, and large-scale medieval warfare.
Chronicles: Medieval Explores the Importance of Sound in Its Open World
Sound plays a central role in establishing the atmosphere of a historically inspired game, particularly when the experience revolves around exploring settlements, traveling through different regions, developing a character, and leading armies into battle. With Chronicles: Medieval, Raw Power Games is building an expansive world spanning the British Isles, France, and the Holy Roman Empire. The latest developer diary focuses on how music and sound effects can help distinguish these environments while reinforcing the consequences of the player’s decisions and actions.
Rather than treating the soundtrack as background music that remains disconnected from gameplay, the development team is exploring how audio can contribute to the overall experience. The objective is to create a world that feels alive through its musical atmosphere, environmental sounds, and the changing intensity of encounters. From quieter moments of exploration to the noise and confusion of military engagements, the audio direction is intended to support the different activities that define the sandbox experience.
The fifth developer diary brings together two specialists responsible for important aspects of this process. Composer Knut Avenstroup Haugen discusses the musical identity of Chronicles: Medieval, while senior audio designer Troels Jørgensen focuses on the game’s sound design. Their experience on previous projects provides a foundation for an approach that combines carefully composed music with audio systems designed to respond to events in the game world.
Knut Avenstroup Haugen Leads the Musical Direction
Knut Avenstroup Haugen is responsible for composing the music for Chronicles: Medieval. His previous credits include Dune: Awakening, Conan Exiles, and Lords of the Fallen, projects that require music to support distinctive fictional worlds, dramatic encounters, and extended periods of gameplay. His involvement in Chronicles: Medieval brings experience from games in which soundtracks help establish the identity of a setting and reinforce the emotional impact of player experiences.
For a game inspired by medieval history, developing an appropriate musical identity involves balancing atmosphere, dramatic composition, and the expectations associated with the period. Music must complement the world without overwhelming the other elements of the experience. It also needs to support different situations, from peaceful exploration and character development to moments when the player commands an army or becomes involved in a large-scale confrontation.
The newly released developer diary offers an opportunity to hear the direction of the soundtrack before the game’s full release. The four preview tracks cover different settings and gameplay themes, including seasonal atmospheres, character creation, and military conflict. Although the pieces are still works in progress, they provide an early indication of how the composer is approaching the relationship between music, setting, and gameplay.
Four Work-in-Progress Tracks Offer an Early Look at the Soundtrack
One of the most significant elements of the new developer diary is the introduction of four soundtrack pieces that players can listen to separately. Each track is associated with a different aspect of the game, offering a broader look at the musical atmosphere Raw Power Games is developing.
Empire Autumn
The track titled Chronicles: Medieval Empire Autumn focuses on the autumn setting within the game’s imperial territories. Seasonal themes can help establish a sense of place and reinforce the passage of time in a large open world. In a medieval sandbox, environmental changes and regional identity can contribute to the impression that the player is moving through a world that extends beyond individual quests or battles.
The track also provides an opportunity to explore the relationship between the musical atmosphere and the game’s historical inspiration. Its title connects the composition to a specific season and political setting, suggesting a soundtrack organized around different environments and situations rather than a single musical theme repeated throughout the experience.
France Winter
Chronicles: Medieval France Winter introduces another combination of geography and season. By presenting a track associated with France during winter, the soundtrack preview highlights the potential for different regions and environmental conditions to have their own musical character.
Distinct musical identities can help players recognize changes in the atmosphere as they travel through the game world. When combined with environmental presentation, architecture, and the events taking place around the player, music can strengthen the sense of traveling between different territories. The preview track offers an early example of how the soundtrack is being organized around the game’s broad geographical scope.
Character Generation
The third preview, Chronicles: Medieval Character Generation, is associated with character creation. This stage is an important part of the experience because players begin their journey by creating a character and determining the starting point for their progression through the world.
Music accompanying character creation can help establish the mood before the player begins exploring. It provides an introduction to the game’s identity while giving players an opportunity to consider their character and prepare for the decisions that will shape the subsequent adventure. The inclusion of a dedicated composition for this activity also demonstrates the soundtrack’s coverage of quieter, more personal moments rather than focusing exclusively on combat.
Empire Battle Theme
The fourth track, Chronicles: Medieval Empire Battle Theme, turns the focus toward military conflict. Battles are a major component of a game in which players can recruit and train armies, develop their reputation, and establish alliances. A dedicated battle theme can help distinguish these encounters from the quieter activities that take place elsewhere in the world.
Military music must work alongside the sound effects of combat rather than compete with them. The composition needs to reinforce the intensity of an engagement while leaving room for the sounds of weapons, soldiers, and other battlefield activity. The development team’s emphasis on dynamic audio suggests that the final experience will combine musical themes with sound effects that respond to the scale and circumstances of combat.
All four pieces remain works in progress, so their final versions may change as development continues. Nevertheless, the early release gives players a chance to become familiar with the game’s musical direction and offers insight into the different situations the soundtrack is designed to support.
Dynamic Battlefield Audio Designed to Reflect the Size of Your Army
Beyond the soundtrack, the developer diary examines how the game’s sound effects are intended to respond to gameplay. Senior audio designer Troels Jørgensen is working on the audio systems that help bring the medieval world and its battles to life. One of the key elements highlighted by Raw Power Games is battlefield audio that scales with the size of the player’s army.
This approach is particularly relevant to a game built around recruiting, training, and commanding military forces. A small encounter and a battle involving a much larger army can create very different visual and gameplay situations. The audio needs to reflect those differences, helping players perceive the scale of an engagement through sound as well as through what they see on screen.
Dynamic battlefield audio can also help make combat feel less static. As the number of soldiers involved in a confrontation changes, the overall soundscape can respond to the developing situation. This creates opportunities for battles to feel more substantial as the player’s forces grow and for the surrounding sound to reinforce the scale of military operations.
Raw Power Games has not disclosed a complete technical breakdown of the system in the supplied announcement. Specific details such as the number of simultaneous audio sources, the underlying mixing architecture, or the precise conditions that trigger individual sound changes have not been provided. However, the stated focus on audio that scales with army size establishes dynamic combat sound as one of the key elements of the game’s audio design.
Period-Inspired Instruments Help Establish the Medieval Atmosphere
Historical inspiration is another important part of the game’s sound direction. The developer diary highlights the use of period instruments intended to help transport players into the medieval setting. Instrumentation is particularly significant in historical games because the character of the music can influence how convincing the world feels, even when players are not actively engaged in combat.
A soundtrack built around period-inspired sounds can help differentiate a medieval setting from the musical language commonly associated with modern action games or futuristic science fiction. The goal is to support the atmosphere of the world while retaining the dramatic qualities expected from a contemporary video game soundtrack.
This approach also needs to accommodate the range of situations that can emerge during open-world gameplay. A composition suitable for exploring a region may require a different mood from music intended for an army preparing to fight. By combining historically inspired instrumentation with music designed for specific activities, the soundtrack can contribute to the game’s identity without relying on a single style for every situation.
The use of period instruments does not, by itself, establish that every composition is a historically exact reconstruction of medieval music. Instead, the announcement presents historical instrumentation as part of the broader effort to create an evocative musical atmosphere appropriate for the game’s setting.
Players Can Help Name a Soundtrack Track
Raw Power Games is also inviting the community to participate in the development process through an activity on the official Chronicles: Medieval Discord server. The studio plans to hold a poll in which players can suggest a name for one of the soundtrack pieces.
The participant whose suggested title wins the poll will be added to the game as a non-player character, or NPC, within its medieval world. This gives the selected community member an opportunity to leave a permanent mark on the project, extending their involvement beyond simply listening to the music or following development updates.
Community participation can be particularly appealing in an open-world sandbox, where the game is built around a world populated by characters, factions, and relationships. Adding a winning participant as an NPC creates a direct connection between the community and the setting being developed by Raw Power Games.
Players interested in participating should follow the official Chronicles: Medieval Discord server for the poll and its submission instructions. The announcement does not specify the final character’s identity, appearance, location, or role in the game, so those details should not be assumed until the studio provides further information.
An Open-World Medieval Sandbox Built Around Character Progression and Warfare
Chronicles: Medieval is described as a historically grounded open-world sandbox set across the British Isles, France, and the Holy Roman Empire. Players begin by creating a character and building their position in the world from the ground up. The experience then expands through character development, army recruitment, military training, alliances, and the gradual accumulation of a reputation that carries consequences throughout the game world.
This structure gives the audio design a broad range of responsibilities. The soundtrack must support the player’s journey from the earliest stages of character creation through increasingly complex activities. Environmental atmosphere, regional identity, and the changing intensity of combat all have the potential to contribute to the sense of progression.
The game’s sandbox structure also makes flexibility important. Unlike a tightly scripted experience in which every player encounters the same events in the same order, an open-world game can produce different situations depending on individual decisions. Players may spend time exploring, building their character, strengthening their army, or pursuing relationships with other groups. Audio systems designed to accommodate different activities can help maintain a coherent atmosphere as the experience changes.
The geographical scope further reinforces the importance of creating a world with recognizable regional character. Covering the British Isles, France, and the Holy Roman Empire gives the game a setting that extends across multiple territories. The soundtrack’s regionally and seasonally named previews offer an early indication of how music may help distinguish the different parts of that world.
Unreal Engine 5 and Raw Power Games’ Asgard Technology
The game is powered by Unreal Engine 5 alongside Raw Power Games’ proprietary Asgard technology. Unreal Engine 5 provides the underlying development platform, while Asgard represents the studio’s own technology. The announcement identifies both as part of the game’s technical foundation but does not provide a detailed breakdown of the individual systems or explain precisely how the proprietary technology contributes to specific audio features.
The combination of an established engine and in-house technology forms part of the framework supporting the game’s open-world ambitions. For a project that combines character development, large environments, armies, and potentially complex battles, maintaining a coherent experience across different gameplay situations is an important development challenge.
The latest diary focuses specifically on music and sound design rather than providing a new technical demonstration of the engine. Its main contribution is therefore a closer look at the creative and audio systems that complement the game’s wider technology. As development continues, additional updates may offer more information about how these systems interact with the world and its gameplay mechanics.
Raw Power Games’ Debut Title Takes Shape
Raw Power Games is an independent studio headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark, with a flexible team of approximately 100 developers distributed across Europe. According to the studio, its team includes developers who have contributed to major releases such as The Witcher 3, Assassin’s Creed, Hitman, Red Dead Redemption 2, Cyberpunk 2077, and Grand Theft Auto.
The studio’s stated goal is to build worlds that players want to explore, with an emphasis on creativity, player experiences, and a people-focused development culture. Chronicles: Medieval is its debut title and represents an ambitious attempt to create an expansive medieval sandbox in which character development, military power, and relationships with other groups shape the player’s journey.
The game is planned to launch first on PC, with console versions arriving later. The supplied announcement does not provide a confirmed release date or a complete list of supported platforms for the initial launch. Players will therefore need to follow future official announcements for information about availability, system requirements, pricing, and the timing of the planned console versions.
How to Listen to the New Developer Diary and Soundtrack
Players can watch Chronicles: Medieval Dev Diary #5 – The Sound of Chronicles: Medieval through the game’s official communication channels. The episode features composer Knut Avenstroup Haugen and senior audio designer Troels Jørgensen discussing the soundtrack and the audio systems being developed for the game.
The four preview tracks are also available individually: Empire Autumn, France Winter, Character Generation, and Empire Battle Theme. Listening to them separately provides an opportunity to explore the different musical directions represented in the announcement, from seasonal atmosphere and character creation to the intensity of military conflict.
Additional information about the game is available through the official Raw Power Games website at https://www.rawpowergames.com/. The studio’s official Chronicles: Medieval Discord server is the place to follow the planned community poll and learn how to submit a suggestion for the soundtrack track-naming activity.
Summary
The fifth developer diary for Chronicles: Medieval offers an early look at how Raw Power Games is approaching the music and sound design of its upcoming medieval open-world sandbox. With composer Knut Avenstroup Haugen and senior audio designer Troels Jørgensen discussing their work, the update highlights period-inspired instrumentation, a soundtrack covering different regions and activities, and battlefield audio designed to scale with the size of an army. Four work-in-progress tracks give players a first taste of the musical direction, while a community poll will allow one participant to contribute a suggested track name and appear as an NPC in the game. Built with Unreal Engine 5 and the studio’s proprietary Asgard technology, Chronicles: Medieval is planned to launch first on PC before arriving on consoles later, with further details about its release still to be announced.
