Coherent Situational Music in Undertale
This is the song “Ruins” from the game “Undertale” and I can’t remember when I had to put down the controller just to listen to the music since then:
By the way, I’m Alex and this is “Game Audio Lookout”, a series about music and sound design in games. In this episode, we’ll look at how the very special RPG “Undertale” creates a coherent atmosphere by situational music.
“Undertale” was originally released in 2015. It is a cleverly made RPG with bullet-dodge shooter mechanics in enemy battle encounters. The game was nearly entirely developed by one person, Toby Fox. In case you haven’t played “Undertale” yet, I try not to spoil any of the story for you since it lives from the wonderfully crafted characters and story twists you encounter along your way through the underground filled with monsters. But I assure you it’s very much worth playing and “Undertale” is one of my favourite games to date.
First, we will look at the music track “Home” playing in the house in the Ruins, one of the early areas in this game:
It is a very peaceful and calm place which is reflected in the art and music as well. The calmness of the scenery is also woven into the musical instrumentation (so to say, the choice of instruments used to flesh out a theme).
In this case, it is a single acoustic guitar. Interestingly, the melody of this solo guitar is the same we hear in the opening piece called “Once Upon a Time” serving as the game’s main theme:
The recurring use of this melody can be seen as a leitmotif.
A leitmotif is a recurrent theme throughout a composition, associated with a particular person, idea, or situation. Richard Wagner was famous for the use of this concept of leitmotifs in his “Ring Cycle” opera series. The whole soundtrack seems connected through a net of motifs recurring in specific situations thus underlining important story elements.
Let’s look a little deeper at the scene where the “Home” music plays out. You can go into your room and turn off the lamp in the upper left corner:
It’s the same song, but now played by a music box. This is a nice example of adaptive music, which means the music changes and adepts to something happening on screen. In this context, it nicely changes the tone of the tune to reflect the lights are turned off now.
Another great example of coherent situational music in “Undertale” is the snow area.
The basic theme we hear when wandering through the snow fields is sparsely instrumented. It consists solely of a piano and a small group of strings:
When you finally reach Snowdin Town it changes to an more upbeat song but keeps the main melody of the Snow Field music.
Another variation on this theme can be heard in the Snowdin Town shop:
“Undertale” also relies heavily on its story and character development. There are two skeleton brothers called Sans and Papyrus. Papyrus is a very goofy and strange person which is wonderfully represented in his theme as well. Listen to a scene where you fight against him:
The battle music for Papyrus called “Bonetrousle” perfectly reflects him as a character with a classical polka 1–2 rhythm and a driving drum beat.
Here we can find an interesting stylistic choice of art and music. All elements of the game such as the main menu, intro dialogue and battle scenes are following an NES-style aesthetic which also is reflected by the choice of music. It follows roughly those restrictions of NES era music with some liberties.
In conclusion, there is a net of leitmotifs within the Undertale soundtrack reminding me more of a Wagner opera or John Williams outstanding work on the Star Wars soundtrack than a classical retro-inspired RPG. Of course, the composers of the time of the NES and Super Nintendo era had to cope with hardware limitations which Toby didn’t had to face today. But in this way, it feels more like a modern but still distinct classical approach to scoring a role-playing game that should be the norm for any RPG in the future.
By using recurring motifs throughout the soundtrack, the music has a much stronger impact on the listener. It is not only much more memorable when themes reappear in another context but also make the whole experience more coherent. To me, it seems like Toby follows the approach of Koji Kondo seeing a game soundtrack as a whole, not only a collection of individual songs.
Toby Fox himself explains it this way:
“The soundtrack to Undertale reinforces [the game’s] earth-shattering moments, knowing just when to rise and fall, and the frequent use of melodies and themes subconsciously manipulates your heart throughout the whole experience. Each song is reminiscent of a time when melodies had to be simple yet discernible, and each piece finds a way to grow outside the realm of chiptunes without losing that simplicity.”
Interestingly, Tobi states he oftentimes started writing the music before creating the scene itself. This may explain why the music in Undertale feels so central and deeply incorporated into the game. To me, “Undertale” is an incredibly touching game and proves in an outstanding way, how you can approach a lot with very little.
References
· https://tobyfox.bandcamp.com
· https://youtu.be/YKy4B29Do7k
· https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Hojv0m3TqA
· http://jasonyu.me/undertale-part-1/
· https://notesanddreams.tumblr.com/post/152825098125/decomposing-undertales-music-composition
· http://fwugradiation.tumblr.com
· https://youtu.be/9xR-xOkKP44
· https://youtu.be/dwampY_jIdg
· https://www.pcgamer.com/the-making-of-undertale/
· https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYAeUkgWo_Y(Leitmotifs in los Videojuegos)
· http://gamingtrend.com/reviews/underground-bound-undertale-review/
