Music in classic and modern video games
http://kotaku.com/5821655/why-video-games-with-silent-heroes-had-the-best-soundtracks
I found this very interesting. It marks the very difference I've been trying to nail down in why I prefer classic game soundtracks to new game soundtracks: classic games had no voice acting. The article points out that games with voice acting cause the brain to focus on the words instead of the music and there's "not enough bandwidth" for our brains to process both voice acting and an interesting soundtrack. The soundtrack takes a backseat to the speech because that's naturally what our brains focus on. This is also why Hollywood movies and video games with a cinematic flow tone down the music for when characters are talking and leave the lead melodies to areas without talking and intro/credits sequences.
This is exactly why I prefer the soundtracks of old and I didn't even realize it: speechless games. Even the soundtracks from LA's games experienced without speech are far more engaging (the music, not necessarily the game). It's a very interesting difference. In the article the author links to two YouTube videos from FFVII, both of a sequence with text and engaging music (yeah, that's most of the game, but you know). One version was the original game presentation and the other with voice acting. The point was to show just how much more effective the music is when there's nothing else to listen to, and it's remarkably true! Maybe you guys understood this difference already, but I've never thought of it that way before. Perhaps that's why I always preferred KQ2+ without voices and why I never found TSL's or Telltale's game soundtracks particularly memorable or striking (though done extremely well). Though I really enjoyed Puzzle Agent's themes....particularly the puzzle themes, because there's no dialogue!
You know, in light of this I really think it'd be great to play a game solely based on gameplay with a rich soundtrack and no dialogue at all. Speech nor text. Just music telling the story. That would be an interesting experience and a fun exercise to score as well. I'll have to do that before I die sometime...
I found this very interesting. It marks the very difference I've been trying to nail down in why I prefer classic game soundtracks to new game soundtracks: classic games had no voice acting. The article points out that games with voice acting cause the brain to focus on the words instead of the music and there's "not enough bandwidth" for our brains to process both voice acting and an interesting soundtrack. The soundtrack takes a backseat to the speech because that's naturally what our brains focus on. This is also why Hollywood movies and video games with a cinematic flow tone down the music for when characters are talking and leave the lead melodies to areas without talking and intro/credits sequences.
This is exactly why I prefer the soundtracks of old and I didn't even realize it: speechless games. Even the soundtracks from LA's games experienced without speech are far more engaging (the music, not necessarily the game). It's a very interesting difference. In the article the author links to two YouTube videos from FFVII, both of a sequence with text and engaging music (yeah, that's most of the game, but you know). One version was the original game presentation and the other with voice acting. The point was to show just how much more effective the music is when there's nothing else to listen to, and it's remarkably true! Maybe you guys understood this difference already, but I've never thought of it that way before. Perhaps that's why I always preferred KQ2+ without voices and why I never found TSL's or Telltale's game soundtracks particularly memorable or striking (though done extremely well). Though I really enjoyed Puzzle Agent's themes....particularly the puzzle themes, because there's no dialogue!
You know, in light of this I really think it'd be great to play a game solely based on gameplay with a rich soundtrack and no dialogue at all. Speech nor text. Just music telling the story. That would be an interesting experience and a fun exercise to score as well. I'll have to do that before I die sometime...
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What I like? Doom I , II. Final Fantasy VII, VIII. Simon the Sorcerer.
Thanks for sharing, music maker.
It works the other way around too, actually. When the Monty Python team showed the Holy Grail, they noted that people didn't laugh at their jokes while music was playing in the background. So they made sure that there was no music playing whenever a funny or an important line was said. (Except for the shruberry line, that is.)
I sometimes actually do manage to enjoy soundtracks while they are played along with text, a notable example being Hardtack and Trenchfoot's theme from Tales of Monkey Island. (This might be because of the music's rather strong nature, so it was as loud as the voice acting.) But the example in the article managed to prove the point very well.
I now think that Nintendo actually noticed it many years ago, as I don't know of one game they made with full voice acting. Also, when the characters do say something, their lines are often hated by the fans. ('Listen!')
Thank you for sharing this with us, MusicallyInspired!
Deus Ex.
Of course, this article is from the point of view that his opinion is that games with memorable soundtracks have better soundtracks than games with excellent ambient soundtracks. It doesn't mean one or the other is horrible or absent of taste, it just means he (and I) preferred the former. I love the music in Myst and the Portal games, for instance, but there's nothing really you can hum besides the Myst main theme and Still Alive/Want You Gone. And I still prefer the soundtracks of Space Quest and The Secret of Monkey Island to them.
The video Tredlow linked above explains that side of it well.
Deus Ex just has both. And it took a long time until another score even got close to that. I just bought that score in the last steam sale. And I bought the super meat boy soundtrack 2 Disc set last year. That one was brilliant too.
Music is for moments. Words interfere with those. When dialogue is being spoken music should usually take a backseat, with some exceptions.
This is actually very pertinent to the current field of online education.
The only game sound tracks that really left an impression on me recently that I can think of are Red Dead Redemption, L.A. Noire, and the Assassin's Creed games.
/thread
(but in all seriousness, some very interesting points there)
Has anyone here played "Superbrothers' Swords & Sworcery" ? Really fantastic game with a minimal narrative and a heavy emphasis on the music.
Never played it. Sounds interesting, though.
Nowadays, fashion is to have "subtle" music in modern films. And this is something I don't personally enjoy very much, as I'm a fan of a score that explodes in your face. However, this is something completely normal: There's a period of alternative film scores, and then the orchestral robust ones return for some time, then the alternatives, and so on...
And now, talking about video games... It certainly depends upon the game. Take for example the Medal of Honor series: It started with big heroic Copland-esque music, and now it has turn into something more electronic and modern. This is something that people say its because of the more "realistic" nature of the newer games, but I say nonsense... Morricone often says that if you can't hear the music, it's bad film music. And he has a point. What's the point of making music so subtle that the viewer can't hear it?
But keeping with the Monkey Island series, to me all the games have terrific music. However, a lot of people have complained in the past that Tales isn't "catchy" enough compared to the other games, and while I don't agree with them, they say this because of a reason: The music is buried under sound effects. If you don't have a good ear or aren't paying attention, you'll barely notice it.
This is something quite common with modern films too. When a composer does a big, masculine and robust orchestral score for a big action scene, the sound effects ultimately win and because of this the score gets mixed extremly low, and most people don't notice it.
But as I said, it's simply a normal transition... I have a feeling that the era of big orchestral scores may be just coming back...
The music in Silent Hill sounds like a bunch of instruments grinding together.
It's also one of the most atmosphere-inducing videogame music ever made.
Also, I'm not a big Halo fan, since I've never really seen what's so great about it, but it's got one of the best theme music I've ever heard.
I get your point. BTW, you still haven't done out requests for your piano versions of ToMI yet!
This idea is presented as an indisputable fact in the article, while I see it more as a necessary tendency in movies. But movie composers also have the tendency to put most heart into the central scenes, and those might very well be scenes in which voices are heard. Interestingly, the writer contradicts himself with his examples. For example, the central Jurassic Park motif is indeed heard first while the protagonists are speaking.
An idea the article does not even touch upon is the very individual feel of early VG music due to the brutal sound limitations of early computers and consoles: Very few sound channels, very few and bad-sounding "instruments", scarcely much memory reserved for the soundtrack. How do you cope with that as a composer? You rely on a very strong, repetitive and present melody or musical motif. For me, that is quite a defining thing in VG music.
I wouldn't call it "subtle". Hans Zimmer's present minimalist endeavors are hardly subtle, but they are also quite unhummable (is that a word?). Less motif seems to be a fashion, not something that is necessarily requested from modern composers. Granted, I was floored when Final Fantasy X suddenly switched to more "ambient" music, while I expected the exact opposite from Nobuo Uematsu.
I do not agree, with all my heart, as a long-time VG music explorer, collector and buyer. Many of my most valued video game scores are from games I haven't even played; and there are even two CDs labelled "Video game music" where a corresponding game does not even exist.
Before I start listing wonderful video game music through the ages, here's a final thought. If we assume that the arguments this article makes were 100% correct, we'd still have to expect ever "worse" movie scores, but not video game scores. That is because narrative scenes - which might constitute an entire movie - would get the less intrusive music, but gameplay/ scenes in which the player is in control, which should constitute most of a game, and TTG take heed, might receive the better, louder, more intrusive, more hummable tunes.
And as to the Jurassic Park reference, they're not really having a whole conversation about anything, just a couple exclamations of wonder, that's it.
And we’re out of beta, we’re releasing on time
So I’m glad I got burned, think of all the things we learned
For the people who are still alive
I either agree with or haven't played with the other games you mentioned, but Portal?
Does that even have any music besides the song at the end and the little Aperture Science ditty that plays on the radios?
Well actually I meant Portal 2 sorry
:guybrush:
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I'm one of those guys who could sing every theme from MI2 but never quite understood when someone said that CMI's soundtrack was just as great (not that i ever thought CMI's music was bad in any way, it just never really hooked me). I was watching some MI2:SE videos the other day to hear how the voices sounded and while i did enjoy them, i couldn't help but feel disapointed at the very same themes i've been in love with for so long. Part of it is certainly nostalgia for the old midi sound but the distracting side effect of the voice acting just seems obvious now.
It's interesting that hit the road gets mentionned in the article... It's also among my short "best video game sountracks ever" list, but i remember that for some reasons the voices didn't work when i first played it (for years i thought the game didn't actually have any voiceovers)...
The same thing happens in just about any song, actually. That's why no one's playing solos or fancy stuff while a singer's singing; it's not so much that you want the vocals to be heard clearly, it's that everyone is gonna focus on them anyway so you'd better not distract from them.
Thanks for this great read anyway
Not Arena or Daggerfall. Those games had great "forefront" soundtracks. Every game since then has certainly been very ambient, though. Well, besides Battlespire possibly.
-slinks off to computer-