It’s a malleable idea that crops up in many places throughout the score as hints or counterpoint, even in the relatively militaristic and straightforward concluding track “Hero Theme.” Phillips anchors her score with a main theme introduced in the first track, a delightfully quirky melody with a number of clever orchestrations and pastoral touches that, appropriately, wouldn’t sound out of place in SimAnimals. Phillips had worked with a Will Wright property before to great effect in SimAnimals earlier in 2009, and Spore Hero represented a leap forward in terms of visibility and player base. Spore Hero, with its more linear and Zelda-like structure, demanded a more traditional and cohesive score, and for that EA Montreal turned to composer Winifred Phillips. The original Spore had a much-touted “procedural music generation engine” supposedly crafted by ambient musician Brian Eno of all people, though actual set tracks were contributed by a handful of Maxis staffers including Kent Jolly and Sim series veteran Jerry Martin.
The resulting Spore Hero (2009) melded some of the mechanics of the original game with bigger emphasis on plot and exploration, and attracted decent notices–especially in comparison to the horrid shovelware that would eventually undermine the Wii as a platform. Though Spore itself required a PC to run, publisher EA had its Montreal arm cook up a spinoff for the then red-hot Nintendo Wii console. Spore (2008) promised to allow players to guide the evolution of a new species from single-celled organisms to spacefaring colonizers, providing an impressive scope and lots of pre-release hype even though reviewers found many of the individual parts to be shallow or underwhelming. Developer Will Wright, the mind behind the venerable SimCity franchise, had big plans for his first game project in years.
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