4 Video Game Soundtracks (and 1 Cue) I Simply Adore!
For as long as I can remember, I have been playing video games and the music of video games has always resonated with me. My earliest memory of gaming music grabbing me is when you boot up ‘Metal Gear Solid’ and ‘choir’ sing those ‘doos’ in A minor, as the logos fly by and the opening sequence that follows when Solid Snake is swimming into Shadow Moses Island and we are teased with the end credits theme, ‘The Best Is Yet To Come’. In fact, I love everything about that introduction. I will leave links to the intro and where the cue is introduced below.
As time marched on, technology improved, allowing developers to do more and composers to have endless possibilities for what they can do and how they can go about it. Some of these pieces have won a permanent place in my heart. So, here are ten video game soundtracks that I absolutely adore. They are not in any particular order or preference.
1. Journey — Austin Wintory
What a better place to start than with the only video game soundtrack that has been nominated for a GRAMMY!
When I downloaded Journey on my PS3, I hovered around the game icon and waited to see if any fancy background came up and what snippet of its soundtrack, if any, would play. What did play was the track ‘Nascence’, which you doesn’t actually appear in the game. It was the first time I was reduced to tears after listening to a piece of video game music. It could very easily slot into a standard Classical repertoire. I felt so much sorrow and yearning in this piece, which made a lot of sense once I played the game through for a second time. I didn’t truly understand it’s meaning when I played it for the first time (I was still very young at the time). When I heard the cues, ‘Reclamation’, ‘Apotheosis’ and ‘I Was Born For This’, not only did I manage to go through a whole kitchen roll (I wish I was joking!), but I realised that there was a place for classical music training in the field of video games. It is simply outstanding, and I lack the vocabulary to tell just how great it is. So please, play ‘Journey’ and listen to its soundtrack.
2. Final Fantasy XIII — Masashi Hamauzu
Here is an incredibly unpopular opinion for you: I think Final Fantasy XIII is a really great game and I personally had no problem with it being a linear experience. There are many things that the Final Fantasy franchise is celebrated for. I believe the biggies are the story and the music so it didn’t really matter to me that there was a lack of world map. Going back to the music, with the exception of the cue ‘Chocobos of Pulse’, none of the music for this soundtrack had anything to do with legendary Nobuo Uematsu (legendary composer of the vast majority of Final Fantasy games, but I’m sure you all knew that already). This is a first for a main entry Final Fantasy game, which is yet another bold decision made by Square Enix. I think it worked. With the dramatic violin solo in the cue ‘Blinded by Light’, the almost lonely sounding piano in ‘The Promise’ (which I listened to for about 30mins when I first bought the game as it plays on the main menu) and the screaming choir in ‘Fighting Fate’, Masashi Hamauzu pulls at every one of my heartstrings, exciting me as a player to push forward with my party of unlikely misfits with the support of the full orchestra (which sounds to me that it has been recorded in the same space at the same time. It is more common practice to do the strings in one session, brass in another etc. so it is easier to control and mix). It also possesses one of the best character themes (in my opinion), which is ‘Lightning’s Theme’.
There are certain characteristics with JRPG compositions that I absolutely adore and Masashi Hamauszu not only hits them all, but he manages to go beyond them, with truly stunning orchestration and imaginative compositions filled with many wonderful harmonic shifts that never leave a dull moment in the soundtrack.
3. Persona 5 — Shoji Meguro
I hadn’t heard of the Persona franchise until last year, which surprised me as those games are basically playable animes and the weeaboo trash residing within me, somehow completely missed them. I imagine this was the case for a lot of other people as well, when reviews, trailers and Lets Plays started to infest the very souls of intrigued individuals such as myself. I can remember buying it, thinking I may not like it because one famous online reviewer said that you would have to manage a social life with friends, using a diary to remember everything. This greatly concerned me because I find it difficult organising my actual life. I thought it would be a tedious exercise in what seemed to be a good game JRPG.
Oooooooooh boy was I wrong! In fact, I enjoyed the social link/confidant parts more than the ‘actual’ game!
You never saw that coming, did you?
Overused joke aside, I don’t know whose idea it was to put acid and lounge jazz into a game about school children rebelling against corrupt adults. At first, this does not make a lot of sense, but whoever it was, I take my hat off to them. I have a huge amount of respect for Shoji Meguro for being able to compose a soundtrack like this where it could easily have been too ‘heavy’ and turned a lot of people off. But he has somehow, he made it an incredibly catchy and relevant soundtrack. I grew up listening to music like this and I have performed in a couple of jazz bands, so I feel that either he grew up listening to music like this too, or did his research. I don’t wish to sound patronising saying that, but it is a very niche genre of jazz. As well as this, there are hard-hitting rocks songs and orchestral cues as well, which just goes to show the huge understanding he has of music. I am incredibly excited to see what genres he will blend together in the next Persona game.
4. Skyrim — Jeremy Soule
I had played ‘Oblivion’, which was the game that came before ‘Skyrim’ and I liked it. Love it even. I had a few problems with it, sure but it did not detract from everything it had going for it.
One of the cues from the game that resonated strongly with me was ‘Peace of Akatosh’. The first time that I heard it was the first time that I stopped what I was doing and just listened to the music. This was incredibly strange to me, as not only was the first time in my memory where I had the luxury in a video game to do this, but it was really the first time I thought ‘Wow, this is amazing!’ Jeremy Soule was the first composer I researched outside of my music studies.
I was told about Skyrim by a friend and he showed me some of the game and I loved the look of it so much that I bought it. Within moments of starting the game, loving the dialogue and restarting it because of a rare glitch (good job Bethesda!) Skyrim had become one of my most favourite games ever. I will claim to know the lore, characters, quests, dungeons etc. like the back of my hand. There is not a game I know more about or have played more, than Skyrim.
But again I digress. As any sane person would, I fell in love with the ‘Dragonborn’ cue. This cranks up the masculinity of the game’s ‘The Elder Scrolls’ theme by multi-tracking a thirty piece all-male choir three times, so it sounds like ninety people, over the top of Jeremy Soule’s incredible orchestration and composition. And yes, all the battle cues are wonderfully barbaric and the cue ‘One They Fear’ and ‘Watch The Skies’ still gives me goosebumps. When I heard ‘The Streets of Whiterun’, I felt that same rush of tearfulness as I did with ‘Peace of Akatosh’. ‘This is modern concert music!’ I screamed…internally of course 😅. The music of Skyrim, born through the incredible mind of Jeremy Soule is some of the finest music I have ever heard, and will forever have a warm place in a gap where my heart used to be
There are many, many games I wish to include on this list, but as I already mentioned, this is not a list of my top four, but just a list of some game music that I love. I have to mention ‘Peace of Akatosh’ because of it’s significance to my life choices.
I will try and add another blog sometime soon with more game soundtracks that I like, as I am nowhere near finished talking about this subject. In the meantime, why don’t you tell me what game soundtrack you adore and why? Do you hate or love any of the ones I have mentioned and if so, why? I am really intrigued to hear your thoughts on them. You can find me on my brand new Twitter page! (@Daniel_Mayfair)
Let’s start a conversation, people!
