The Ingenuity of Nier’s Music
How Keiichi Okabe’s remarkable scores are brought to life by a talented development team
Anyone who considers themselves a fan the Nier games will list its music as one of the series’ greatest strengths. I’m not one to disagree with that claim — Keiichi Okabe’s composition work for the Nier games stands out amongst the very best video game soundtracks and is one of the prime examples for how video game music is an art unto itself. Okabe’s soundtracks for Nier (both Replicant/Gestalt and Automata) are defined by their ethereal and dreamlike aesthetics, the wide range of emotions they can instil, and their usage of haunting choral vocals sung in a fictional language (primarily by the talented Emi Evans). The quality of the music speaks for itself, but what most enraptures me with Nier’s score is not the music itself, but the originality with which the soundtrack is presented to players.
One of the first aspects of the Nier series’ clever usage of its soundtrack involves the way it is able to build on and slowly introduce portions of tracks as the setting and narrative calls for it. For instance, overworld theme songs will have vocals and instrumentals phase in as the player traverses from area to area, building up the musical track layer by layer. Several area themes will start as solely vocal pieces with minimal instrumentation, then add more and more ingredients to the song as the player progresses, culminating in a grand version played during the area’s climactic boss fight. Oftentimes, field themes will seamlessly transition into more high-energy battle versions of the same music when encountering enemies, then ebb back into the standard version after the battle is won. The effectiveness with which the Nier games is able to develop and vary its music adds a true feeling of narrative progression and dynamism through the game’s various locales — having unique music dedicated to specific areas and having those same songs change in accordance with player actions gives each setting its own unique feel and ambiance, as well as the true sense of progressing through a detailed world.
Not only is Nier adept at developing the sounds of its original music, it also pulls several ingenious tricks to vary the sound of its score, often with reasoning that’s justified in the lore of the game. For example, the main hub village in Replicant will add diegetic vocals to its theme when the player approaches a certain bard NPC, and the same vocals will fade as the player runs elsewhere. In Automata, battles that have the player switching between third person action combat and the twin-stick shooter hacking minigame will seamlessly swap between the standard orchestral versions of tracks and cleverly composed 8-bit equivalents. A certain piece in Automata, “Birth of a Wish,” is often played as the game’s enemy machines chant a mantra, and thus has a handful of versions with and without the robotic chants overlaid. An opera-themed boss in Automata will attack the player in sync with its unique boss theme, making the battle feel like a twisted dance of sorts in time with the music. with Perhaps most famously, the credits theme of Automata, “Weight of the World,” has several versions in different languages (English, Japanese, and the fictional Nier language) which play during the various credits sequences, and players don’t get to hear the completed version (containing all three aforementioned languages, an 8-bit intro, and choir vocals sung by the game’s development staff) until completing the game’s E ending. This usage of music as a gameplay element is one of my favorite accomplishments of the series — it’s the best usage of music combined with gameplay that I’ve seen in any video game, and demonstrates the amount of uncharted territory that gaming has yet to explore in regards to integrating music and gameplay.
At its core, all of Nier’s musical strengths are anchored by a strong understanding of leitmotifs and how to best utilize them. Leitmotifs, for those unfamiliar, are recurring musical phrases that are usually associated with a character, setting, or event. Several of the most influential works of classical music, as well as film and theater scores rely on leitmotifs to instil feelings of continuity and familiarity amongst listeners and viewers. Okabe’s usage of leitmotifs is likewise fundamentally strong — many of the series’ characters have their own corresponding themes which will play during pivotal scenes involving that character. However, it’s not limited to characters — Nier is exceptional at whipping out a song at the optimal time for maximum emotional impact. Automata has several instances of this — the secret boss fight with Emil in Automata is overlaid with a sweeping choral version of his theme from Replicant. A visit to a cave containing a field of familiar Lunar Tear flowers is punctuated with the tear-jerking theme of Kainé, who wears a Lunar Tear in her hair. Entering a recreation of the first game’s iconic library in Automata will play the Popola version of the “Song of the Ancients,” the same exact theme that played in its original appearance. Usage of recurring music and the leitmotif to instil emotion is a simple tactic, but extremely effective when done right, and the Nier series pulls it off splendidly.
Keiichi Okabe’s work on the music of Nier is sublime, but the game’s directors and creative team deserve praise as well for how they were effectively able to draw the best out of Okabe’s score. They weren’t content to just let the music stand on its own, but rather weave it into gameplay and turn it into something the player can interact with as well, which is a remarkable feat. It’s a prime example of “it’s not the tools, it’s how you use them,” and I sincerely hope that this ambitious approach to scoring music for video games can take a firmer hold in the industry at large.
