Five days ago musical legend David Bowie passed away. It came as a shock to the world, instantly summoning grief as well as widespread interest in his legacy. As some would come to find out, he liked video games and even starred in one back back in 1999.
To do something special in remembrance of David Bowie, Square Enix is offering his first video game performance for free, Omikron: The Nomad Soul. The official post states the following:
To get your free copy head to the Square Enix website and use the coupon code omikron.
In Omikron: The Nomad Soul David Bowie offered both a motion capture performance and musical work. His performance came in the form of work as two characters, Boz and an unnamed musician.
The game was Quantic Dream's first, who would later work on Heavy Rain. The studio's director, David Cage, had a lot of positive things to say about David Bowie following his passing, including this:
So here we are in this nice office waiting for David Bowie in a meeting room, not knowing what to expect. I will always remember the minute he came in the room. He had an incredible aura, something I had never seen before or since then. He was very nice and friendly, apologized for being ten minutes late because of the traffic, and introduced us to his “video game specialist”, his son Duncan Jones (he would later become a talented director).
I had been briefed that Mr. Bowie would only have 20 minutes, and that I would have to be very concise. I had been working on the game night and day for two years; I had hundreds of pieces of artwork, thousands of pages of script, some 3D sets running on a PC, and I had no clue how I could share all the ideas, and the passion and enthusiasm I had for this project, in 20 minutes. Fortunately, the meeting went on for two and a half hours. Bowie listened with a lot of attention, looked at everything we showed him, and asked some relevant questions.
At the end of the meeting, he asked me, “All this sounds very exciting, what do you expect from me?” All we wanted was the rights to use his song “Heroes”, which would have been a fantastic asset for the game and an immense honor for a young studio like Quantic Dream (or any studio, actually). Bowie stayed silent for a second and finally answered, “No, I am not going to give you an old song,” there was tremendous disappointment in the room, “I am going to write an album for you guys.” We were all looking at each other, not sure we understood him right and wondering if he was serious. “Tell me what else I could do for you,” he said. Well, we needed instrumental soundtracks for the game, and it would be amazing to have David Bowie be a character in the game. We shook hands and wondered if all this was true or if we had all dreamed it.
Be sure to download the game ASAP to take advantage of this limited time deal, even if only to remind yourself of how far games have come in the past 15 years.
