Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Composer Wins Gaming’s First Grammy

It’s official, a video game has won a Grammy for its soundtrack. This year’s Grammy Awards were the first to include a category for Best Score Soundtrack For Video Games & Other Interactive Media. The first winner of this historic music-based prize for video games is the composer for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: Dawn of Ragnarök, Stephanie Economou.

 

Stephanie Economou produced the music for the DLC follow up to Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and the score was seemingly good enough to go toe-to-toe with some other big-name musical entries from 2022. Other contenders included the score/soundtrack from Aliens: Firestorm, Call of Duty: Vanguard, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, and Old World. Not very many indies on the list, but maybe it’ll take a little longer before non-AAA games get recognition like this.

In her acceptance speech, Stephanie Economou paid some tribute to all the people who have been fighting to get games recognized at the Grammys in their own category. So, this is the beginning of games getting more attention at events like this, although the validity of that as a necessity is something that could be argued, because do awards really matter? But it is nice to see.

There was one rather hilarious part though, because the presenter who announced that Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s composer had won seemingly didn’t know how to say “Assassins,” “Creed,” or “Valhalla.” These were apparently strange words for him to say, and a video has circulated with his confused announcement.

At least Stephanie Economou got her moment in the spotlight for her stellar audio work. Only slightly undercut by the presenter’s confusion. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: Dawn of Ragnarök, on the other hand, didn’t get the best review here at NoobFeed with us saying: “Some people like it, while others toss it in the trash after two days.” But hey, at least the music was good!
 

Justin van Huyssteen (@LC_Lupus)
Senior Editor, NoobFeed