Today came word that SqureEnix are cutting its internal music department and while notable composers such as Masashi Hamauzu (Final Fantasy X, Dirge Of Cerberus), Tsuyoshi Sekito (The Last Remnant and founder of The Black Mages) and Takeharu Ishimoto (Dissidia, The World Ends With You) and others may have been layed off it is by no means a overly negative thing. Obviously being layed off work from a company you’ve worked for as long as 12 to 15 years isn’t going to be taken with a smile but it does open up new possibilities for those composers. Long time Final Fantasy composer Nobou Uematsu left SqureEnix in 2004 but still maintained a working relationship with them, scoring soundtracks for the 2005 Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children and in 2008 the main theme to Final Fantasy XII, having turned down the offer to work on the complete score and will return to score the complete soundtrack to Final Fantasy XIV this year.
By SquareEnix letting these already well established composers go they are free to create scores for non SquareEnix titles, in the same way Uematsu did for Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon and Super Smash Bros Brawl. It wouldn’t surprise me if these composers ended up working with Uematsu over at his company Smile Please or another musical games giant. It makes sense and hopefully the people that have been layed off (not just composers) will move to other studios and continue to work their creative magic rather than simply vanishing into obscurity.
While reading about this news I was struck by the thought of the impact of the music from video games has on people. I am quite an avid fan of the non-vocal orchestrial soundtracks and I have quite the extensive collection of music from notable Japanese and Western composers from the likes of Yoko Kanno (Macross Plus, Cowboy Bebop), Kenji Kawaii (Ghost In the Shell, Mobile Suit Gundam 00), Nobou Uematsu (Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy X), Daiskue Ishiwatari (Guilty Gear series), Jack Wall (Unreal 2, Mass Effect), Peter McConnell(Grim Fandango, Brutal Legend), Frank Klepacki (C&C Red Alert series), Tetsuya Shibata (Devil May Cry), Hans Zimmer (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Pirates of the Caribbean) and Jason Hayes (Warcraft) for example. An extensive example list but by no means everything I have.
Music takes up a huge part of my spare time and if I’m not doing something where my ears are required to pay attention to what’s going on I will stick some music on in the background. I can’t work without some form of background noise and I find video game soundtracks to be the perfect fit for almost any situation. Pro tip though guys, never play the Silent Hill soundtrack at two in the morning before a deadline, when no-one is in the house. The most played soundtracks on my computer are those belonging to Nobou Uematsu as I find the soothing instrumentals of Final Fantasy fantastic to work or write too. Although given that my chosen profession is video and sound post production the two sadly don’t overlap but it has certainly kept me awake during many dissertations.
Music when applied to games often gets over looked if not looked at independently, unless of course it feels out of place. In a majority of reviews I’ve read over the years the emphasis is never on the music unless it takes an active role in either the games core functionality (Guitar Hero, Rockband, Ouendan) or uses it to play up to a situation such as the previously mentioned Silent Hill. Music can be used to create just the right atmosphere to help draw the gamer into the immersion of the scene. Silent Hill for example used music to raise tension throughout the game when there was a distinct lack of visuals or action , as for periods of time you would wander aimlessly around with only the radio making bizarre noises at you and then when you did find monsters they didn’t seem that interested in you anyway. That would a correct use of a soundtrack, one that seamlessly enhances the gaming experience without being obstructive or overly intrusive into core gameplay.
That being said I have in more recent times found a lack of a soundtrack makes for a better experience. During my first play through of Mass Effect 2 I turned the music off just so that I wouldn’t be given too much of an advanced warning when the ambushes occurred, as the music would start up just before those moments, which kinda gave the game away. What I discovered was that it made the game more atmospheric as the lack of a background track allowed me to hear every single thing that moved and on the derelict Reaper for the first time that is terrifying, bringing back memories of playing Aliens vs Predator 2 and hearing the motion sensor blip go off every it swayed in the breeze.
With production values in games becoming ever higher, the music is also improving but doesn’t always get the round of applause it deserves sometimes and that’s quite frankly a shame because in instances the music is the only thing that is worth saving from some games. Argueably most will be of the mindset that everything has to come together to create a rich gaming experience. Plot, playability, graphics and music must all complement each other; otherwise it falls at the first hurdle.
