First, some bad news for Mass Effect fans. Jack Wall, Video Games Live! proprietor and composer of the first two Mass Effect scores, won’t be returning to write music for the final game in the trilogy.

The good news? Requiem For a Dream and The Fountain composer Clint Mansell will be replacing him.

Along with the underrated work of Sam Hulick, Jack Wall’s score played a crucial role in texturing the Mass Effect universe, so it’s unfortunate that he won’t be rounding out the trilogy… but it’s hard to complain about the franchise landing the gifted Mansell. Here’s what the former Pop Will Eat Itself frontman had to say about scoring his first game:

“As I was saying about Public Enemy and re-working old hip-hop tunes for Requiem, and kind of re-working old ballet tunes for Black Swan, with something like Mass Effect you’re more like a DJ, with all these elements. You’ve got the holding pattern, then the big explosion where you need the score to kick in. Then you need to take it off on a tangent. You’ve got all these different elements that change depending on what the player does. You have to figure out an overall symphony, but be able to break it down into component parts. You can bring the pain when required.”

By now, everybody knows about Mansell’s Two Towers trailer orchestration. Check out Dead Reckoning from the Smokin’ Aces score for a taste of Mansell at his most Mass-Effect-y:

Source: The Quietus via Badassdigest