Respawn’s Star Wars Jedi: Survivor wins a Grammy for the Best Video Game Soundtrack, beating out Hogwarts Legacy and God of War: Ragnarök.
From John Williams’ musical genius from Star Wars: A New Hope to Ludwig Göransson’s rising musical innovation in The Mandalorian, the scoring of the Star Wars universe continues to grow and evolve. Composers Stephen Barton and Gordy Haab won at the Grammy Awards last night for their Star Wars Jedi: Survivor score for Best Score Soundtrack for Video Games and Other Interactive Media. Crazily enough, the duo beat out other major composers like Austin Wintory and Bear McCreary.
The other nominees in the same category included Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Sarah Schachner); God of War Ragnarök (Bear McCreary); Hogwarts Legacy (Peter Murray, J Scott Rakozy & Chuck E. Myers “Sea”); and Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical (Montaigne, Tripod & Austin Wintory). News of the win has been shared by both composers and official accounts. “The Force is strong at the Grammys,” shared the EA Star Wars Twitter/X account.
Both winners took to the stage to receive the award. Haab thanked his family for their “love and support”, while Barton dedicated the award to his music teacher, explaining, “We had the choristers from the Pilgrim’s school in Winchester come and record on this,” and it “reminded me about music teachers being the most important thing.”
This also marks Star Wars Jedi: Survivor as the second winner in this category, as it was just introduced last year. Stephanie Economou won the first dedicated Grammy award for a video game soundtrack last year for her work on the score for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: Dawn of Ragnarök. Valhalla beat several other games to claim the title, including Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy and Call of Duty: Vanguard.
Respawn Entertainment is no stranger to being a recipient of a non-gaming award. In 2021, the studio won the Oscar for Best Documentary Short, which was awarded to Antony Giacchino for his work on Collette, an immersive VR film about a former French Resistance fighter originally featured in Respawn’s VR World War 2 shooter Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor continues to showcase their craft in building out the Star Wars lore. While it had a rough PC launch in April last year, with numerous patches since released to address its performance issues, it thrives in sales. The game’s launch sales smashed its predecessor, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, by 30%. A third Jedi game is in the works according to lead actor Cameron Monaghan, however, this one will be made without the leadership of previous game director Stig Asmussen.
