Game Score Fanfare is a show that celebrates music in video games, an aspect so overlooked as that's often the point: to work without you even realising it's there. I look at games through the lens of its score, discovering the unique perspective and roles that music can bring.
Another great example of this - sustaining a musical theme through the scene's battle so as not to take you out of the emotional moment - though not via Uematsu, is the Bahamut fight in Bevelle Underground in FFX-2.
To be honest, except for Island, I hate everything about the design philosophy of the Yoshi games. I understand that it was a reaction against the realistic rendering of DKC, but the direction they took is even MORE hyper-realistic than DKC every was. The only difference is that it looks like hyper-realistic yarn, cardboard and paper garbage. Island gets a pass because it is harmoniously colorful. And even though they were aiming for crayon aesthetics, to me it just colorful and organic.
2:36 Unnecesary tension has a ruins part (2 notes) Ooo is used as a background effect in waterfall. Megalovania has a part in Bring it in, Guys! Barrier is used as a background effect in waterfall. And small shock has 2 notes synchronized with Undertale.
I learned a new word from watching this video. The word Succor. As a verb it means “give assistance or aid to.” As a noun it means “assistance and support in times of hardship and distress.”
My favorite example of an intro to a song like this is against the final boss of Octopath 2. Spoilers, obviously. When going from the first phase to the second phase against Vide, the song "Those who hope fo the dawn" plays while your initial party of 4 is released from the entrapping darkness created by Vide. This is immediately followed by "Those who deny the dawn" which is the same song with the additional detail of the lyrics from "Vide, the wicked" which plays during the first phase. I love how it's a song that goes from expressing the desire of the main party to fight Vide and their desire to see the light of dawn once again, to a song that expresses Vide's desire to keep the protagonists, and the world, from ever seeing the dawn again along with the fact that despite you being halfway through the boss, the fight is anything but over, and to overcome him means to defeat a god itself. It's made even better by what Throné says when she's at a full boost during the fight: "I will fight a god if I must!"
I revisited the music of Bravely Default and, consequently, your channel. I am grateful for everything you have shared with us and hope you are happy with whatever you are doing now!
I played every game of Supergiant's, and Pyre is by far my favourite. I love the worldbuilding, the characters and the music too, how those elements are intertwined with eachother. Especially how the music is themed to every moment makes this one of my favourite game OSTs. A fantastic detail is that whenever actual english is spoken, it's supposed to represent the lost language from before the commonwealth was formed, so whenever the bards or Wolfred speak english, they are supposed to do it in the actual world.
This video perfectly captured my experience of Ori and this level specifically. Ginso Tree is one of my favourite levels for both level and sound design in the platforming genre.
yeah i just finished this game this week and the smooth music transition into boss theme FOR EACH CHARACTER was really cool and memorable immediately bought the sequel too 👍
I feel like there's a lot of information lacking here. You mention FFIV being the first game with characters having default names, but FFII already had this. In fact, Final Fantasy II is pretty notable for being one of the first heavily story-driven console RPGs, and the whole game is built around this. In many ways, FFIV is a successor to a lot of the concepts seen in FFII (rotating cast of pre-named characters, structurally fully plot driven, character death cutscenes, etc). A huge musical element that should've been dicussed here as well are the boss themes. The usage of a boss theme in FFII is a landmark for the series, and the usage of a final boss theme in III is another landmark. These boss themes develop the motifs from the regular battle themes, and the FFIII final boss theme is a really cool variation of the regular boss theme. FFI has a final dungeon theme that's an arrangement of the first dungeon theme, which has a LOT of context in the story! There's also multiple other dungeon themes that get re-used in different areas, and then some dungeons that have unique music, which is an interesting choice in itself. Additionally, all of the ending sequences of these games have longer, fleshed-out pieces of music that revisit and re-arrange many of the existing motifs in the soundtrack, which really helps to nail home the vibes of the game and give a satisfying conclusion. I get that these games can be seen as pretty primitive by modern standards, but what they were able to accomplish despite their limitations for their time period is pretty fascinating. The vibes of this video really came off more as dismissive than celebratory, interested, and open-minded. There's simply a lot more music here to be discussed in the context of leitmotifs. I almost feel like you may not have acutally finished these games.
FF Fan here (look at the pfp), I'm in the middle of Music Theory and this video alone is the best thing to ever to help get me to *understand* music. Thx for getting me into music theory, Nobuo Uematsu!
The FFVII Remake version might be my favorite. The addition of martial drums creates a great contrast, it really sells the idea that Final Fantasy is a dreamy, fantasy tale but also a game about war and occasionally death and loss.
Funny considering later on Square Enix would do something similar for Final Fantasy games later, in FFXVI (16) you actually hear a lot of references to FFXIV (14) in boss fights, case in point is Garuda's theme you hear from 14 plays in the boss fights between Ifrit and Garuda, the same thing happens again with Omega with the theme eScape from 14 being played but at a faster tempo in 16 when you fight Omega Aionis (Talk about a pattern, Nobuo Uematsu and Masayoshi Spoken both used that same approach)
There was an important reason for the music not resetting. A reset of the music implied a failure on the players part, like a director calling cut to a scene. With Ori, the music continuing told a player it was normal. Maybe you don’t get it on that attempt…but you did better that time, keep at it!
Lots of conjectures and assumptions throughout the video. People didn't notice David Wise didn't compose DKC3? According to whom? Based on what studies? Everybody knew it wasn't Wise, Fischer and Wise's overall styles are hella distinguishable from one another :s People in the West thought Minako Hamano was a male because her name sounded like a male's name? According to whom?? Based on what?? If you or anyone were into video games or manga, then you wouldn't mistake her name for that of male.. 🤦♂️ People thought the composer for the 1st Castlevania was a man because it was credited under a male pseudonym? According to whom? Based on what? Literally all the names that are in the credits do not exist because they're silly puns on well known celebrities and fictional characters from Western media. Nobody really knew their true names until much later. This whole video is what happens when you let people who are truly unfamiliar with the world of video games make videos on.. well, video games. It's all about painting this narrative that apparently no one, absolutely NO ONE in the West knows that MOST video game composers (especially Japanese) are females. My bad! And here I thought it was common knowledge since I was a kid (30 as of now)..
"People didn't notice David Wise didn't compose DKC3? According to whom?" Go on to David Wise's Twitter and you will see him responding to countless tweets misattributing DKC3 and various DKC1 tracks to him. "People in the West thought Minako Hamano was a male because her name sounded like a male's name? According to whom?" I never said Minako Hamano sounded like a masculine name, just that those unfamiliar with Japanese naming conventions make the mistake. For this I read multiple reviews written at the time of Super Metroid at the time which mistook Minako Hamano as male. "People thought the composer for the 1st Castlevania was a man because it was credited under a male pseudonym?" Yes, that is a very reasonable conclusion to make. It is absolutely not "common knowledge" that a lot of early video game composers were women. Just look through the comments of the video to see people who were unaware. And these are people watching a youtube video about women game composers! Just imagine how much lower that is for a more general public.
What's really fascinating to me is how much of a different vibe you can make using the same upper notes with different undertones and instruments. FF7 theme sounds so much more chill and heavenly while FF8 theme sounds like nightmare fuel
