Bioware founder says JRPGs "lack evolution"

[daschrier]

Prime Mover liked the Blue Dragon boss music. Just some context there.

That's cause Ian Gillan kicks all kinds of ass.

[MeshGearFox]

That may well be the case but that song sucks.

Also in terms of techno in sci-fi games I either tend to prefer the almost muzaky sounds of PSO or some of the track off of DDS2's soundtrack. (What's funny is that they applied similar 'instrumental' and I use the term loosely because it's midi as fuck stylin's to the FFL2 DS remake and it suuuuuuuuuuuuuucks).

(Boards of Canada's my favorite techno band but I associate that kind of music more with indians and auto industries and sweeping endless flatlands than outer space. Never seen an RPG where Roygbiv or Chromakey Dreamcoat would be an appropriate overworld theme, which is a shame.)

Actually I think it'd be hard to do that and sell it giving that it'd almost necessitate "bad" 80s/90s styled CGI. Lots of flat shaded simple models. Stylistically a couple of games came close, like Frontier: Elite 2, which isn't that fun to play, and the Mercenary games, which are. I'd like to see that done in a modern style, although not really since one of the cool things about that visual style is how clean it looks and modern game stylins' are too infatuated with greeble and superfluous visual complexity.

Who the fuck came up with greeble anyway? Real spaceships are sleek as hell. They're like flying dildos.

[Prime Mover]

That may well be the case but that song sucks.

No it doesn't, the music is awesome, it's just that the lyrics suck. But remember, I'm a Dream Theater fan, so I'm used to looking past attrocious lyrics, you could almost call me a pro.

Oh, and the song at the end of ME was "M4 part 2" a tune by Canadian shoegazer band "Faunts", written independantly of the game. I love that tune, it inspired me to go out and buy two Faunts albums, which suck by the way. Case-in-point, though, is that the song has nothing to do with the game, wasn't written for the game, and wasn't even altered to fit the game. Which makes me even more pissed off because game developers should be accruing elements that are created for their overall vision, not using it to sell unrelated pop artists. It's always been a sour point with jPop intros, and I'm sorry to see the west starting to do it too.

Regarldess, at least “M4 part 2” is a great tune, and not total crap like the credits song for DA:O, which sounded like an army recruitment video music bed.

What ever happened to the art of commissioning music? Homeworld developers commissioned Yes to create their theme song, which resulted in one of Yes’s best works in over a decade, “The Ladder”, which was specifically created with the elements of the game in mind. There’s even a really cool interview with Jon Anderson talking about working with the Homeworld developers on it.

That’s the shit I’d like to hear happening more often.

[MeshGearFox]

...not using it to sell unrelated pop artists.

You do realize that the Homeworld guys were doing that with Yes, even if they DID have Yes write a song specifically for their game.

Also Cyan commissioned Peter Gabriel to write songs for some of the Myst games and they all fucking sucked.

I'm not even particularly aware of commissioning musicians to compose for games was that common. In the past they just had in-house guys do it, or they'd find some musically-talented buddy of the head programmer, or whatever.

And when I say the Blue Dragon song sucks, I mean because it's a generic, 80's style hair-metal... something. The lyrics make it bad. The vocals make it atrocious. Without the singing and words, it would be merely anonymous and forgettable.

[daschrier]

I loved the Gillan song, I also love Persona 3's soundtrack too...

[Prime Mover]

I don't mind developers comissioning music from pop artists as long as the songs are meant to fit with the game. If for no other reasons than encourages new material, and new inspiration (as it did with Yes). It's a process that's been around for over 400 years, and it's spawned many of the greatest musical masterpieces of all time, so I can't possibly be down on that. What I'm complaining about is completely unrelated material that just gets licensed for an opening or closing credits theme because it "sounds cool" or may "attract fans". Sure, comissioning Dream Theater to do a tune for God of War III might be considered "Shameless Pandering" (hell, I almost want to get the game to hear what they do), but at least you get an original tune out of it.

Oh, and as for Peter Gabrial, for every shitty Myst tune (can't say I've heard it myself, though I've played through 1-4 and all the music was great), you have him do something like the ending credits for Wall-e which was just brilliant. Or you get U2 doing "The Hands that Build America" fro Gangs of New York.

But the fact remains, no original music came out of the credits of Mass Effect, and Faunts went on to produce their shittiest album yet! Maybe if they had been comissioned, they would have made a turnaround comeback like Yes did with The Ladder. Maybe, maybe not, but we would have one new song that would never have been written, at the very least.

Note to BioWare: next Canadian artist to do ending credits music should be Devin Townsend. Have him write a ball-shattering ending theme for ya!

[Jet16]

Sure, comissioning Dream Theater to do a tune for God of War III might be considered "Shameless Pandering" (hell, I almost want to get the game to hear what they do), but at least you get an original tune out of it.

I don't think any of the music that the bands make will actually go into the game. It's just on a bonus disc if you buy the Ultimate Edition.

[CDFN]

Sure, comissioning Dream Theater to do a tune for God of War III might be considered "Shameless Pandering" (hell, I almost want to get the game to hear what they do), but at least you get an original tune out of it.

I don't think any of the music that the bands make will actually go into the game. It's just on a bonus disc if you buy the Ultimate Edition.

Yup.

"God of War: Blood and Metal EP – a heavy metal homage featuring original music inspired by God of War (mp3 digital download). "

The ost of all 3 games is also in there.

[Prime Mover]

Awe... I didn't realize that, I thought it was a music bed track. Oh well, I'm not going to buy GoWIII because I'm not a huge beat-em-up fan, but I'd love to get my hands on that EP for DT and Opeth.

[MeshGearFox]

We should go back to the C64 days where the games were completely irrelevant and you only bought them for the Rob Hubbard music.

[Parn]

We should go back to the C64 days where the games were completely irrelevant and you only bought them for the Rob Hubbard music.

I loved me some Rob Hubbard, but I loved Ben Daglish even more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6emKAeso06Q

[MeshGearFox]

Cool song bro. Why can't they build badass appregiators into modern console sound processors like they did back on the C64? Then maybe they could've done that with the FFL2 DS remake and it wouldn't have sounded so retarded :(