Your Game Music is Bland and You Should Feel Bad

[Izanagi009_v1legacy]

Opposite for me, only have heard snippets of Guilty Gear's soundtrack but I love the Blazblue soundtrack. Nightmare Fiction and the new Roku Eiyuu from Chronophantasma are fun to listen to and act as great fight music

Well worth giving the older soundtracks a shot then. You could say they're less eclectic than Blazblue, but at the same time, I consider them more focused. With Blazblue, I often feel it seems like he's running out of ideas.

Guess it's a matter of what you like, focus or eclectic. I love eclectic stuff for all of the little cultural and music themes mixed but i understand why some won't like it.

Perhaps I should listen to Guilty Gear though

 

[CleverCover]

I don't know if I can agree with Mr. Yahtzee. The music I remember best from videogames or any medium is when what was going on around it became a memorable moment...or it played so many times it became ingrained in my head...or the my brain came up with a story to match the music.

The beauty of the song, lyrics or no, was how it complemented the moment. An orchestra playing something low and sweeping before battle and then something grand during it during a medieval rpg is would fit the moment better than someone playing a licensed rock song.

It has to capture the feel of the moment. I bought just as many recent soundtracks as old to know why I adore both.

 

[A Weakgeek]

You guys have mentioned Metal gear, but not the best track in the entire series? Shame on yall.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

I usually kill a game's background music and fire up an mp3 player to run in the background. Fortunately a few games I play have user added tracklist supported. I think Skyrim had o.k background music, not sure, I turned it off almost right away. But not any of the Command & Conquer games, they always have had excellent ingame music. Except 4 maybe, I have almost purged all traces of that game from my memory.

Studios go for the generic crap because licensing official music is very expensive.

 

[Proverbial Jon]

Boooo, shame on you Yahtzee, the Halo Games have excellent soundtracks! I mean we all remember this right?


Du du du dunnn, du du du dunnn, du du du duuun de do de

i think it was a bad choice to try and call out Halo, of all things...

dun dun dun duunnnn dun dun dun duuuuun dun dun dun duuuunnn.....

Normally I'd be the very first person to defend the Halo soundtracks (at least I would be if I were quicker to this thread!) but Yahtzee did mention Halo 4 specifically and that soundtrack was largely forgettable. Mostly because 343 Industries didn't benefit from the talents of Marty O'Donnell.

Halo 4's music is more akin to incidental music rather than an actual soundtrack. Instead of matching the mood, atmosphere and action of the scene it just kinda acts like musical noise to play in the background, which appears to be the approach most triple A games use these days. It also didn't help that Halo 4 had no audio volume options and the music was often criminally drowned out by everything else. Neil Davidge did a decent enough job on the score but it was no Halo soundtrack.

As far as I'm concerned, Martin O'Donnell's ability to match music with both gameplay, environment and narrative are unparalleled.

 

[elvor0]

Boooo, shame on you Yahtzee, the Halo Games have excellent soundtracks! I mean we all remember this right?


Du du du dunnn, du du du dunnn, du du du duuun de do de

i think it was a bad choice to try and call out Halo, of all things...

dun dun dun duunnnn dun dun dun duuuuun dun dun dun duuuunnn.....

Normally I'd be the very first person to defend the Halo soundtracks (at least I would be if I were quicker to this thread!) but Yahtzee did mention Halo 4 specifically and that soundtrack was largely forgettable. Mostly because 343 Industries didn't benefit from the talents of Marty O'Donnell.

Halo 4's music is more akin to incidental music rather than an actual soundtrack. Instead of matching the mood, atmosphere and action of the scene it just kinda acts like musical noise to play in the background, which appears to be the approach most triple A games use these days. It also didn't help that Halo 4 had no audio volume options and the music was often criminally drowned out by everything else. Neil Davidge did a decent enough job on the score but it was no Halo soundtrack.

As far as I'm concerned, Martin O'Donnell's ability to match music with both gameplay, environment and narrative are unparalleled.

Yeah, that's pretty much the case with Halo 4. Most of the tracks on the first 3 Halo games are golden. I will fight you to the death however over Nobuo Uematsu being the best video game composer though

 

[Primero Holodon]

I suppose I can't speak for everyone, but I can think of quite a few songs from modern games that left an impression on me:

"Far Away"- Red dead redemption
"Deference for Darkness"- Halo ODST
"Vigil"- Mass Effect
"The Secret Revealed"- Bad company 2
"I'm Sorry"-Far cry 3
"Venice Rooftops"- Assassin's Creed 2
"Will The Circle Be Unbroken" Bioshock Infinite
not to mention the entire fallout 3 and new Vegas soundtracks and the intros to both borderlands.

There's plenty of good music to be found in modern games.

 

[Rad Party God]

Maybe Halo 4 has a more generic soundtrack, considering Martin O'Donnell wasn't even involved in the project, but I can definitely come up with about any song from Halo 1 & 2 and hum it all day long, 3 was just a combination of 1 & 2.

I know half of today's games music isn't as memorable as before, but when it works, it freaking works as good as the old soundtracks of yore. I still search Age of Conan and Okami's soundtrack in YouTube from time to time.

I could put on a few hundred YouTube links to some of my favorite gaming tracks, but I'm a bit lazy right now.

 

[Martinchee]

Let's NOT forget the (probably previously mentioned) moment in Saints Row The Third where you do some killing in one of the earlier missions while this plays:

 

[Myoukochou]

Oh, I don't know about that. I'm currently playing Hotline: Miami, and the soundtrack on that is the glacé cherry on top of a beautifully-iced cake of neon-soaked death.

Perhaps it is just that we forgot the forgettable soundtracks, because they were forgettable.

 

[Ausdoerrt]

As a musician and composer, I have to say: I don't think a theme song being "humable" is a very good metric when determining how effective a soundtrack is. By all definition, a soundtrack's job is to compliment, not overburden. In the retro days of memorable, catchy tunes, game soundtracks were the most prominent sound effect - nowadays, aural atmosphere is achieved by so many disciplines that the soundtrack's prominence would act against it.

Orchestrations have produced many memorable game soundtracks, don't get me wrong. I think Halo Reach's is actually the best Halo soundtrack, Super Mario Galaxy has twice provided exhilarating scores, and games like Asura's Wrath and Rayman Origins have provided a uniqueness in full orchestral scores quite unlike their peers.

Not every game needs an orchestral score, this much is true. And simpler is often better, this too is true. But orchestral soundtracks have provided some of the best music in videogames, and I don't think I'm alone in thinking that.

Your post has a point, but I don't entirely agree.

First of all, the era of prominent soundtracks is not quite over, and it works fabulously even in larger, AAA titles. Arc System Works games have already been mentioned, and I think it's a good example where a strong tune reinforces rather than distracts from gameplay.

Secondly, there are many more ways to achieve atmosphere with music without using an oh-so-familiar Hollywood-style soundtrack. For example, chamber music (Arcanum) or ambient (Fallout 1/2, Torment, TOEE).

Finally, having an orchestral soundtrack doesn't mean it has to be bland. Listen to any of battle tunes for Last Remnant: the OST has strong orchestral influences (albeit also rock/metal influences as well); it's "epic", and yet utterly memorable: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njI2fT4d2CY&list=PL75DA4CF0DA460A52


To sum up, Extra Credits, as usual, offers occasionally decent ideas, overly simplified "layman's" description and poor examples. But the observation about the popularity of "singl-alongs" is definitely true, even outside game music. Thus, "humable" isn't quite right, but IMO having at least a few tunes with a prominent, memorable melody does a lot for a game's music quality. And that can be true for absolutely any style of music from classical to techno to metal.

P.S. I'm also a music player and, to an extent, a band composer myself, if that matters any

 

[Torchiest]

I know this thread is old and dead, but I wanted to add my agreement about The Elder Scrolls theme song. That piece is amazing, catchy, and extremely popular. It's also quite hummable. A couple other amazing soundtracks are the ones for FTL: Faster Than Light and Terraria. Both are extremely fun games that the music really adds a lot to.