When Fallout 4 is released later this year, players will have over 400 hours worth of content to explore, as they try to survive the game's Boston-set wasteland. From crafting their own weapons and strongholds to romancing NPCs and seeking out secrets, players are going to have plenty of reasons to stick around. Plus, with Bethesda having announced big plans for Fallout 4 DLC, and with the game getting mod support on all platforms, it seems unlikely that anyone will get bored of the game between now and whatever comes next.

What's especially vital to this experience – on top of the gameplay and how the game itself looks – is how Fallout 4 actually sounds. As they're exploring the wasteland, Fallout 4's music and sounds will set the tone for the game's dramatic boss battles, it will create an epic atmosphere as players discover a new place for the first time; everything that players hear will influence how they see the world.

After already revealing the fact that Fallout 4 has over 100,000 lines of dialogue, Bethesda has now given Fallout fans a taste of the game's soundtrack. Inon Zur, who has worked on over 50 different video games (including Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, Dragon Age: Inquisition and Prince of Persia), is the composer of Fallout 4's score, as well as its main theme.

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The main Fallout 4 theme can be heard in the video above, with Zur playing the entire thing on his piano. While many fans would agree that the theme sounds impressive as a piece of music, it also has a hidden message, which Zur explains on the Bethesda blog. The composer states that with his work on the Fallout games, he aims to showcase "duality." In this case that duality manifests in "the despair of war – but also the hope for the future".

He notes that players are always "torn between the despair and the darkness and all the dangers that are lurking in the world" and so to show this he combines a minor chord and a major one for that "bittersweet Fallout feel". It's "very simplistic" says Zur, but it "works like a charm every time".

Zur also reveals some other, rather unusual techniques he used for creating the game's music. He says that he has walked through his garden just hammering on things and has even tried scraping a cello bow against a garden chair to produce a sound that's "shrill as hell." Even his piano isn't immune, as he "cruelly exploit[s]" it by "hitting the strings with open hands and even biting the strings".

Although his means are incredibly unorthodox, the composer does it to help "reinforce the emotional dimensions of the Fallout 4 story". The game kicks off with the player character being the only survivor Vault 111, and Zur says that after meeting with Fallout 4's audio director Mark Lampert and game director Todd Howard, he felt that it was a "very personal story". The personal side of the game is also why the piano features so heavily in the game's score.

In addition to the piano, the accordion also features in The Last Mariner, another one of the Fallout 4 tracks that Bethesda released today. Players can check out both tracks at the accompanied link below.

Fallout 4 is set for release on November 10, 2015 for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

Source: Bethesda