The more art you put into a triple A the more risk you introduce that it’ll fall flat. And with the incredible budgets on triple A’s nowadays, execs just aren’t tolerant of risk.
Uematsu is hands down my favorite video game composer ever. He’s done so many fun and interesting soundtracks. His tracks have style, they’re catchy, they’re emotional, they’re memorable, they speak. FF9 or 8 were his best.
I still listen to the FF8 soundtrack daily. It’s absolutely beautiful! Most games these days have very forgettable music. I actually can’t remember most of it.
Part of the reason I enjoy games is for the soundtracks. Modern games that come to mind are Persona 5 and Nier Automata which has do much memorable music. The soundtrack creates an Identity. So many games feel like the sound team doesn’t care if I play my own music instead.
Based. I love his music btw from FF4 to FF9 he’s one of my favs with Lotus Juice and Yoko Shimomura and I agree with him 100%. Movie music is boring as shit and his music is way way better
Music is integral to build the game’s overall atmosphere. At least indie studios still get it: Look at Cuphead, Hollow Knight, Hades, Vampire Survivors, etc.
I get what he’s saying. Game music used to have a much bigger “job” in fleshing out the world that the game presented to you. I remember for example songs like Final Fantasy VII’s Gold Saucer, Chrono Cross’ Termina (Another World) that set the tone of the place you’re visiting: busy, active, crowded and festive. If you take the music out, you have a beautiful yet static, almost frozen landscape - it comes alive with the music. Nowadays the visuals can be so detailed, the worlds so big and busy that the music seems to be an afterthought: it’s just ambient music for the already immersive world of the game. And I believe that has lead to a lot of composers settling for just that: ambient music.
I think on Twitter I once messaged Gareth Coker, the composer for Ori and the Blind Forest, about how beautiful the music on that game is and how there’s a big emphasis on melodies. He replied that the studio specifically pushed for melody-heavy songs, rather than just ambient music that only complements the action. That makes a huge difference.
Although there’s exceptions. I’m playing FF16 right now and the only piece of music I can play in my mind is the beginning of the "special-er“ battle music that’s that final fantasy battle music but reimagined on a big violin - meanwhile I can play the whole vs. Möbius track of XC3
Sea of Stars was such a refreshing game. From the music, to the backgrounds, to the combat, it was like a love letter to 90’s RPGs. You only get that level of quality and love from indie games these days. Games from large companies just don’t have any soul anymore.
There’s a huge budget bloat, which means having to play ever safer to maximize your audience.
The reality is that only small games can afford to be gambles and actually have an identity and a soul.
Big budget games need to be works of incredible craftsmanship like the Arkham games to maintain a soul while being unimpeachable in execution, and you can’t just throw money at the skill problem.
You can however throw money at 10387 consulting firms to make sure you’re aiming for maximum palatability, and inevitably make homogenised pap for babies.
For instance: it’s really telling when even a game that should have been edgy as fuck like Suicide Squad had to lionize Wonder Woman, and only Wonder Woman, because apparently you can’t humiliate her and unceremoniously murder her alongside every other beloved Justice League member.
That is an example of the “incredible craftsmanship” I mentioned.
Id software knows what they’re doing, as much as you can hate zenimax/bethesda/Microsoft they do leave their subsidiary/partner studios alone to do their thing, mostly.
I would say that a lot of this has to do with survivor bias. Most of the shitty soundtracks were forgotten and buried. Only the really good ones had staying power. So it is easy to convince yourself that the past was so much better because you remember the good and a lot less of the absolute trash that existed back then and compare that cherry picked past to today’s mix of good and bad.
Hell, movie like soundtracks in movies are getting boring. One of the reasons I saw dune in theaters was because I was expecting an awesome soundtrack that used a diverse array of instruments and sounds, not just generic western orchestra
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