Top Fives of Another Breed - Part I

This is not to say that my lists contain dogs or the like, but rather a curious assortment of music shout-outs I thought ought to be shouted. Of course, this list is entirely subjective being that it's an opinion from my limited perspective. There were a lot of games released this year. Consequently, there were many game soundtracks released as well. Either officially or unofficially. Sadly, often times a good soundtrack does not a good game make. Or rather, not one of wide acclaim. I aim to point out some sleeper hits in the music department as well as other top accolades of the oh-seven annual. As a note, I'm not placing these in any specific order. It's just an arbitrary assortment grouped into fives. Today, I'll cover game soundtracks. Part II will contain the other music CDs I've enjoyed in the year.

Game Soundtracks

• Ar Tonelico II

The folks at Gust love 2D. Turn-based RPG-style 2D. And alchemy. They also used to love MIDI. However, it seems that with moving away from the Atelier Iris series and into the Ar Tonelico world, more sophisticated renderings came with. I've always enjoyed Gust soundtracks, but this one really nailed it for me as far as re-kindling the old emotional attachment to strong themes and beautifully written melodic work. The two arranged CDs released only top things off, bringing arrangements for multiple female vocals to many of the game's tunes along with their complex and weaving lines. I was afraid that the heyday of Japanese RPG soundtracks had ended with Mitsuda and Uematsu all but leaving the scene, but Gust's audio team keeps proving me wrong.

• Wild Arms the Vth Vanguard

Wild Arms has a legacy of great music paired with mediocre games, and it seems the same holds true here. While the original game's composer is not present this time around, her spirit lives on in the tunes written by the two composers for this title in a multitude of styles. The main style of the game seems to be some sort of bizarre hybrid of spaghetti western whistling, disco beats + strings, and flamenco guitar. Whatever it is, it works, and the main themes and battles have some of the most memorable melodies written this year. When not in western mode, the music ventures into a precious category that I can't explain the details of but instantly evokes memories of one of my favorite RPGs: Skies of Arcadia. Though the composers are different in entirety, there must have been some influence from one to the other as the similarities are remarkable.

• Blue Dragon

It took me a long time to appreciate the music in Blue Dragon. You see, I have a bit of beef with Nobuo Uematsu. I tend to have a selective memory when it comes to certain musical elements, and Uematsu is one composer that I really have to listen to the right stuff at the right time to remember why I love what he writes.

There are three things that I can't stand about his compositions: First and foremost, he has only ever written two villain themes in his life. Kefka's theme, and everyone else's theme. (One-Winged Angel doesn't count, as it's different from Sephiroth's theme, and it's been so over-played it makes me want to vomit.)  I'm sure you're familiar with the latter. It's in nearly every Final Fantasy game. I'd hum it here if I weren't writing text. And even after finally separating himself from the fantasy, moving on to new ventures as his own business with Smile Please, he constantly makes me frown with the usage of that same fucking theme yet again in Blue Dragon. The second thing? Ridiculously sappy vocal themes. As much as Uematsu is a great instrumental writer, he is not a good songwriter and never has been. The only time that a good vocal theme has come from him is when lyrics are put to his existing instrumental themes. (See: Roaming Sheep from FFIII) Apologies to those who wept in sympathy for Squall then 'Eyes on Me' started playing in the spaceship Ragnarok. It's a terrible song. Sure, the instrumental versions of it are lovely, but engrish vocals sung by poppity pop stars just doesn't work for me. The third peeve is more of a recent one, and has to do with his increasing reliance on orchestrations and his rock band The Black Mages. One of the main reasons Uematsu has been hailed as a genius in his compositions for games is due to the sheer variety of textures and experimentation in instrument groupings. To suddenly utilize a singular sound seems to go against all that I thought his music stood for.

However, as the case may be, I eventually realized I was wrong about Blue Dragon. It's not just a "git er dun" soundtrack by Uematsu. I've yet to actually play the game that it accompanies, but the music here tells a strong, albeit youthful, story filled with all sorts of the same wonderful quirky nuances that I'd come to love from Uematsu's music. Yes, the villain theme is the exact same as it's always been. Yes, there's not only one but four increasingly ridiculous vocal themes. Yes, there's a lot of live players... However, it took me a while to realize that while the live players were there it was still strongly comprised of Uematsu's style and pairings regardless. And I still loved listening to it.

• Persona 3

 While Ar Tonelico II and Wild Arms 5 explore expanded sounds of yesterday and Blue Dragon explores an elaborated voice of an experienced composer... Persona 3 takes game music into a totally new realm in a wonderful way. Granted, it's not an entirely unique perspective. The same composer has been around for years, writing music for the Shin Megami Tensei series. However, P3 is probably the most approachable of all SMT games and also the most mature when it comes to the skill of writing. The music is not only topical to the game, but as a soundtrack it is very listenable on its own as a sort of dark hip-hop album. Like Ar Tonelico II, it also has a great arranged soundtrack that accompanies it as a great way to listen to the music on the go in a non-looping fashion.

• Uncharted: Drake's Fortune

Yes, I do enjoy non-Japanese game soundtracks! Also on my list this year would have been Heavenly Sword, but due to the fusion of the experience and music I decided to give Uncharted the edge. Part of it may have to do with my infatuation with the TV show Firefly. When I found out that composer Greg Edmonson was to be the composer working on Uncharted, I nearly fell out of my chair in excitement. The man's a very talented composer, and his first foray into the world of interactive music left me extremely optimistic for the future of his music. While I do love my gamey games, as is evident by the first four soundtracks mentioned, Edmonson's music takes the game of Uncharted and creates the atmosphere of a high-budget serial TV show. I won't say movie, because it doesn't quite feel like one and for good reason. The game is more of the style of the afternoon serials that the Indiana Jones movies were fashioned after. All the evidence is there: A tight, wildly entertaining ensemble cast. A mysterious island with a secret. A twist towards the climax that propels you to the end. It was almost like watching a season of Lost that fucking made sense at the end. That said, the music kept me in that atmosphere. If it had been any other score, I would've been making game associations and the like. None of which bad, but Edmonson gave the game its own wonderful flavor with strong character-driven themes and some excellent action tunes to boot.

Improvements for the New Year

Just briefly, at the end here, I wanted to touch on some of my disappointments with this year's soundtracks and how things might improve by composers moving into the new year.

• Focus yourself, Sakimoto

Hitoshi Sakimoto's newly founded independent studio put out an amazing number of soundtracks this year, and unfortunately it shows in the individual quality of each. A grand total of seven scores were vomited out: FFXII Revenant Wings, Grim Grimoire, Odin Sphere, Deltora Quest, ASH: Archaic Sealed Heat, Final Fantasy Tactics A2. Not only that, but Sakimoto also scored the anime series Romeo x Juliet. How did he do it? Simple: Write the main themes and a few battle themes and let your company's fellow composers finish the rest. Or, in Revenant Wings and FFTA2's cases... just recycle music from previous games. I'm sorry, but that's just fucked up. Sakimoto in general pissed me off this year. He wrote a brilliant soundtrack to one of 2006's best RPGs, Final Fantasy XII... And as a result, he gets extremely popular and everyone wants to hire him. Instead of being choosey and selecting his projects carefully, he takes on every single one of them and does a piss poor job at it recycling themes even when it's not for the same franchise. Pre-2007 Sakimoto had a distinctive style yet still remained unique to the game he worked on. Now, I don't know what to think as it almost sounds as if he's ripping himself off constantly. Final Fantasy Tactics A2's soundtrack in particular is a joke. It's one thing to remix tracks from the original FFTA, but to include the exact same pieces used in both FFXII and Revenant Wings in yet another game? That's the laziest excuse for soundtrack writing I've ever come across. You're better than this.

• Where did you go, Mitsuda?

Meanwhile, Yasunori Mitsuda's independent studio keeps getting more and more obscure as the years go by. Instead of gaining popularity, Mitsuda seems to be constantly losing it. The last good soundtrack to come from Mitsuda and his company was the CD Hako no Niwa, the score to Magic Pengal 2, back in 2004. Since then, he's released a compilation soundtrack with Miki Higashino that didn't really gain much attention. In 2005, he released a beautiful CD called KiRite. Then finally, this year, he released the soundtrack to a game called Armodyne that was so under-the-radar that no one has ever heard of it outside of Japan. The music isn't even good at all, sounding like a pale shade of Xenogears with all the life sucked out of it. One thing is clear for 2008: Yasunori Mitsuda needs to make a major comeback.

• Will US developers continue to defect to other media?

It's hard to get a job writing music for games. It's even harder to do it in the US. 2007 made this brutally clear. Greg Edmonson scoring Uncharted. A famous British composer scoring Heavenly Sword. A Hollywood composer scoring Lair. In-house composers at major companies continuing to write for their respective games, no matter the quality of the music. The fact is that there is a dangerously popular trend going on in the US game development houses where established composers in other media are being given trump card against new and upcoming artists. Yes, they have experience, but this is an insular way of thinking. I suppose it's just wishful thinking on my part that the concept of "new and exciting" will sometime strike a chord in the minds of these game creators wishing to not only expand the vocabulary of games, but to expand the definition of "game soundtrack" beyond those containing the words "cinematic" and "dramatic".

That's all from me. I'll write more on non-gamey themes later!