SPOILERS FOR: Final Fantasy VIII
At the top of the castle, above the mists and the noise of the populace, you
stare of into the distance. The view distance must be a few hundred miles, you
say to yourself. You can see the sun slowly falling to the west horizon as the
moon peeks out from the east. The birds fly above in a V-formation as they
glide through the southern breeze. Here it's almost nothing but you and the
sky, as you try to make sense of this adventure you're in. You acknowledge the
immediacy and the importance of your mission to take down the malevolent one,
but for a few minutes you just wish to savor the sounds of silence.....
*KABOOM*
Seconds after entering the castle balcony, a blairing orchestral piece begins to
play, catching you and your TV speakers off guard. Visibly pissed off, you tune
down your speakers and decide to forget the balcony, choosing to go down to buy
items and level up on some hapless fool on the world map.
********
Since the evolution of sound-recording technology, music in video games have
undoubtedly become one the "make or break" aspects for a game. Music has
evolved from mere bleeps to sweeping five minutes scores in just twenty years,
and the effort put into making them has evolved as well. Most games now have
composers that work full time on a single game to create masterful work of art.
In the past they used to work on a single synthesizer; now we game companies
lincensing an entire orchestra. We can clearly see the gap time, talent and
technology have helped breach when it came down to sweeping musical scores.
Of course not every darn scene in a game needs a musical score. Nowadays most
of every scene in RPG's feature some sort of musical tract in the background,
even during scenes where it would come out as.... rather out of place.
Recent games are seemingly following the trend of having a song playing
somewhere at every scene in every part of the game. Whether it be some
intergalactic space battle or a short chat down by the lake, you can be almost
absolutely sure that a song's playing in the background. Whether the piece is
appropriate or not is subject to opinion, but we can mostly agree that most of
every scene in RPG's today have a corresponding theme.
So what about the scene's that *don't* need a theme? Music is a fine and dandy
addition to improve the enjoyment of the player, but there are those cases that
music serves nothing less than to distract the player from the atmosphere and
meaning of the scene. In rare cases, utterly destroy it. That is not to say
that music is nothing more than a game wrecker, rather that there are moments
where music, or at least too much of it, becomes more of a annoyance than a
blessing.
Sony's ICO stood in stark contrast to games of our age. Suffice to say, this
game practically had only two or three tracks including the ending theme. As
you play through the game you'll be playing almost without any music, but in my
last fifiteen years of gaming I've yet to see a game set such an involving and
moving setting as this, almost without any music at all. If there is any true
sound that exists here, it would only be found in the environment and the
character's own untranslatable language. Yet somehow ICO pulls it off,
combining little dialogue and even less music to pull off a game unlike any
other, yet for all it's silence it manages to pull you in for an emotional ride.
In the end, for me, a scene does not depend on its music; rather the music
depends on the scene. You can't just tack on any piece of music you make into
every scene you make. It has got to "fit" in some shape or form. If it
doesn't, then perhaps the scene doesn't need a song; let the silence speak for
itself. There are simply scenes that don't need a song, or any sound for that
matter. In it's core the emotion and the meaning pours out without the
assistance of sound. Silence is enough to convey to the reader its intention.
FVIII shows how the sound of silence shines. In the scene where Rinoa frees the
witch in space, she ends up floating through space, alone, with her oxygen
running out. She has a few thoughts of despair as she realizes that she's going
to die. And then.... her oxygen runs out. She floats across the screen, in her
space suit, through the blackness of space, in utter silence.
That, my friend, speaks in volumes a langauge no amoung of music of text will
ever be able to express.
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