Rockman, indeed!

So, I've been meaning to do this for a week or two now.  I've just been very busy doing important things that could in no way be delayed.  But here it is, a little late, but no worse for wear, I hope.

Pictured: Important things.

I've been a big fan of video game music for a long, long time.  I don't exactly have an encyclopedic knowledge of composers, styles, etc., but my ipod can usually be found blaring tracks from one game or another.  My parents even have a home video of me from 1991 singing along to the music to Batman on the NES (luckily, no one has watched home movies since about 1993).  But still, to this day, every time I rip that plastic off of a new game and start it up for the first time, the music is the first thing I pay attention to.  I get more excited for the music than I do for the rest of the game, and a good opening title track can really bring a game up a few notches in my book (and a bad one can really upset me...)

What the hell, Capcom?

But anyway... as a casual listener of video game music, I've noticed a trend in recent years that disturbs me.  Quite frankly, I don't think it's as good as it used to be.  Or, rather, not as memorable.  Seemingly gone are the days of melodies that continue to play through your head long after the game is over.  That has been replaced by - at worst - droning noise, and -at best - lovely, sweeping orchestral music that, while working within the confines of the game for which it was written, is largely forgettable when the game isn't being used as a backdrop.

I just listened to the most recent GI Show on Friday, where Reiner was talking about Darksiders 2.  He mentioned that the music was wonderful, and that he would find himself humming the tunes throughout the day.  I have to disagree, and hope that GI doesn't send large Minnesotan (Minnesotese?) men to my house with baseball bats to break my PS3/Xbox.  Or face.  Whichever they find more valuable.

Let me explain.  I'm not going to say that the music is BAD, because it clearly isn't.  Jesper Kyd knows what he's doing, and the music for Darksiders 2 is definitely a complex piece of work, and within the game, it works very well (and is also heavily Celtic, which is always good).  My problem with it is this - I put the soundtrack on my iPod and brought that with me to work, and gave it a listen.  I listened, listened, listened some more... and the music never really changed, to the point where I was thinking to myself that there were likely just very long tracks.  After about an hour or so, I checked my ipod, and saw that I was already on track 16.  Sixteen!  Sixteen tracks, and there wasn't a single track that had stood out, or distinguished itself in any way from the others. 

This is a trend that I've seen happening in a lot of recent games.  Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty.  Music that is good while you're playing the game (or, at worst, doesn't detract from the rest of the game), but that becomes almost unlistenable when taken out of that context.  Becomes almost unrecognizable.

I don't want to be one of those people who thrives solely on the nostalgia of games past... one of those people that believes that newer music is inherently bad.  But it does seem that there has been a shift away from the memorable yet simpler themes of, say, the SNES, N64 and PS/PS2 eras, and the more structurally complex yet somehow prosaic tunes of the newer generation.  And I can both understand and not understand how this has come to be.  With newer games, the emphasis has come to rest on two main things - graphical superiority, and robust narratives.  In older games, with simple (and sometimes cliched) stories, and graphics that could not fully articulate the action taking place, the music had to be more memorable, so as to serve as a bridge between the emotions were were supposed to be feeling, and the faceless, emotionless sprites (or polygons) that were displayed on screen.

Take Final Fantasy 7, for example.  *possible spoilers, I guess?*  When you meet Sephiroth in the basement of the Shinra Mansion in Nibelheim, and you finally realize that he's gone completely insane.  The camera in that area is a pretty horrifying closeup of the character models, with their giant eyes and giant lack of any other details whatsoever... *shudder*.  Without the characters themselves being able to articulate the emotion of the situation themselves, you had to rely on the music to set the tone of the scene.  And you get this - with those tolling bells, and those dark midi-vocals, it really drives home the fact that this is one bad dude.

Pictured: Sephiroth.

But what's more about the music itself is that it's memorable.  It gets in your head, and is simple enough to be easily remembered, yet complex enough to convey the feelings that you should have whenever you hear it.  Of course, it's not always about having an emotional response.  Almost every track in Final Fantasy 7 is memorable in one way or another.  And pretty much anything on the NES is almost devoid of anything resembling an interesting plot, so instead, the music falls to being just a catchy tune that you find yourself humming hours later.  Or days.  Or years.  Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, any track from the first 3 Mega Man games... I haven't played Mega Man 3 in years, but I'll be damned if I can't hum along to the tune from Spark Man's stage entirely from memory.

I can't think of one recent game that had a track that had that kind of staying power for me.  With larger, more memorable stories, and action scenes that rival those of movies, you would think that you would get music that would be just as memorable.  Instead, though, we get things like this.  Or this.  Of course, this is just one man's opinion, but there is nothing memorable about either of those tracks.  And the rest of the music for each game is largely the same (especially with Modern Warfare 3, which is basically six hours of that track nonstop, and then end credits... which sound pretty much the same).  That track from Modern Warfare could be from literally any point in the game (if you ignore the fact that it's called "Battle for New York").  There are obviously a few exceptions - a few moments of greatness in a sea of mediocrity, a few diamonds in the rough... but they are so few and far between now that it makes the rest of the music in the game seem lesser for it.  With the larger narrative scopes and the greater emphasis on the ability to have a game look amazing, the need to have the music be memorable and powerful enough to almost tell the story itself has waned, leaning more towards more generic sounds, more atmospheric music that really isn't important.

I guess that's where I'm seeing video game music going.  Despite the who's who of game music composition (and Hans Zimmer) being involved in pretty much every new game, the music just doesn't seem as important anymore.  It's there to be passively absorbed while playing the game, and then forgotten.  Which is all fine and good, don't get me wrong - if the music goes well with the game while I'm playing it, I'll have no real complaints.  I'm talking about it as a listening experience outside the game - that's where I think it's starting to fall apart.  And I really think that it doesn't have to be that way.  Just take those three examples I linked above... great music is still out there, hidden in the noise.  There are even some tracks that manage to be great despite pretty much going against everything I've said here.  It's clear that they're all trying their hardest to be great.  Maybe it's just ALL great now, and as such, it's less a matter of picking a diamond out of the rough than it is picking a diamond out of a sea of diamonds.  The problem is, when everything is great, nothing will be.

Incredibles reference!  BOOM!

Of course, I hardly have an encyclopedic knowledge of all the music out there.  I'm sure I've missed some of the greats, just as I'm sure that some of my favorites are ones that would make others question my sanity.  At the end of the day, I'm just a guy who loves video game music, and wants to keep experiencing all the glory that it has to offer, new or old.  Just a guy who would never be happier to be proven wrong.