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Most Impressively Composed Video Game Soundtracks?

Anyone use/made any video game playlists on Spotify? Do many VG soundtracks make it to Spotify? There are so many id love to listen to on the go but I mainly just stick with Spotify so purchasing through other stores isn't ideal. Could be my only option though.
 
Andrew Korenchkin said:
The question may seem confusing, so I'll explain it. As one knows, the elements of a musical composition, such as rhythm, timbre, scales used, musical form, chord progression, time signature, etc. can be incredibly complex, novel, esoteric, and full of depth. I'm wondering what video game soundtracks are most impressive under this sort of criteria.

Just to be clear, I'm not thinking about how much nostalgia the soundtrack has, the emotions I get out of the music, or how much personal enjoyment I get out of the soundtrack, but the most impressive soundtracks that could be used to show off how sophisticated gaming music can be.

Which soundtracks do you think are the most impressive, Gaf?
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The Diablo and Diablo 2 OSTs are pretty damn phenomenal, and not having anything to do with the "nostalgia" factor. The music is just as good now as it was then. A lot of what Jesper Kyd does is also exceptional. Say what you will about the actual game, but Darksiders 2 had an amazing soundtrack. Probably one of the top three of last gen. I'd call those works anything but "simple" too.

I don't really quite understand your question though. A lot of the older games on more limited hardware would sound even better and potentially more complex today than it did when MIDI was what most game music was being transposed to.

Thoraxes said:
Liking the end result or not is another thing entirely, but the craftsmanship on display is always way up there.
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Quite often those concepts aren't mutually exclusive.
 
xam3l said:
The Witcher 3 present us with a fusion of styles not seen in any medium. It has it all.
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I was afraid to say this, but now I can join in supporting your claim! It uses so many old-style instruments that the music fits perfectly in the setting and gives it a distinct tone. Also it pays great homage to the slavic roots of the game and it's world. Though the musicians in Percival aren't classically trained but self-taught so maybe it's not all so "sophisticated".
 
The more accomplished 8-bit, 3-5 channel music often leaned more towards counterpoint style compositions which is much more associated with classical/orchestral music rather than contemporary western popular music, and this was moreso done out of sheer necessity since it's a much more efficient way of conveying harmonization via countermelodies rather than sacrificing 3 whole channels just to play a chord for a rhythm section.
 
This is way harder then i realised, but let's try nonetheless

Final Fantasy tactics
Valkyrie profile
Suikoden 1
Suikoden 2
NieR automata
Shadow Hearts
Persona 4
Shadow of the colossus
Breath of fire 3
MGS snake eater
Final fantasy Tactics
Vagrant story

And perhaps the GOATEST of all GOAT

Xenogears

It always was xenogears
 
Chrono Cross. No other game soundtrack has as many gems as this one. Aside from this, there were so many amazing soundtracks from RPGs during the PSX era.
 
Too damn hard given the generational issues present on the tech side which carves it all into giant batches...to say nothing of that being something of a self-inflicted wound in all hardware that followed after the Saturn* upon The Great Homogenizing...

Screw it, I'll just say Lords of Thunder for one because they put in some serious work that will remain evergreen long after many others even in the same space are forgotten.
 
Phediuk said:
Adventures of Batman and Robin for the Genesis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=915k0mMK-Fo
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dark10x said:
Heh, yeah. In terms of pushing hardware synth to the limits, this is up there. Every track is incredibly lengthy and detailed. Kyd pushed the sound chip so far that the game itself ended up with almost no sound effects since all of the channels were dedicated to music.

It's grungy, dirty FM synth at its finest.

This track in particular goes crazy places.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSuPZWqOGiY&index=6&list=PLC07EBC6571E991CD
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This game is a really good choice.

When the title theme of a 16-bit sidescroller lasts for 9 minutes before it reaches the loop point, you know the composer wasn't fucking around.
 
I don't know too much about music theory, but a friend who does says Journey has the best he's heard.

for me, i'd say the Halo games - without knowing what goes into it, really - just orchestral music that sounds awesome to me.
 
Pretty much all of Marty O'Donnell's work on the Halo series is incredible. The man is a genius.

I also really appreciate the music Gustavo santaolalla was able to create with a minimalist approach on TLOU.
 
Thoraxes said:
To be fair, it's hard for most people to take objective looks at music without much formal training. It's way easier to know what you like, and if lucky, exactly why you like it. Music is definitely not the easiest thing to talk about in concrete terms for most people.
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Agreed. I can appreciate those topics because people come rushing with good music, but to actually talk about it on a technical level is way, way beyond me.

I admire your posts that can keep it concise enough that we illiterates can understand something....I think.
 
Falk said:
I feel like there are a few different categories you could judge video game music:

a) After the advent of hardware powerful enough to basically go with streamed audio, the sky's the limit in terms of what a composer can do since all the game needs to do is play back a baked track. Therefore, one way we judge the music is the way we'd judge any other non-game medium - by its production values, musical complexity, etc. This is the most in-line with the premise floated by OP. Suggestions in this thread like Masashi Hamauzu, Marty O'Donnell and the Bloodborne crew fall strongly into this category, even if they also function in either or both of the next two:

b) Back during the sequenced or programmed music days, there's a lot of artistry involved in getting the chips to do what you want them to do, and pushing against technical limitations. Saying more with less voices, etc. People like Tim Follin completely dominate this category, and many of the 'greats' have their unsung sidekicks in the form of the people who turned the compositions into something that the hardware could play.

c) What I feel defines 'impressively composed video game soundtrack', on the other hand (and this is completely against the theme of the thread floated in the OP) is how the music works in the context of the game itself. I'm not specifically talking about an interactive/dynamically changing score, although that factors very heavily into this, since it really, really requires understanding the concept of a game, what the game intends to convey to a player, and supporting that with the music. Systems like in GTA5/RDR which may not be super impressive musically, simply works in this context. However, even without dynamically changing works, it takes a mastery of the art to write music that fits into a certain usage within video games, because otherwise you might as well be any other type of linear media composer.

As a specific example, I feel that Masashi Hamauzu encapsulates this concept very well with Blinded By Light. Despite being a fire-and-forget track that the game calls up when a battle starts, the composition itself demonstrates a very deep understanding of the typical use cases for combat in a JRPG. It starts off low-key, presents its first main motif over a minute or so, and then breaks out into a more upbeat second half. The typical use-case of a JRPG (or FFXIII specifically) is such, that if a specific combat encounter lasts more than a minute, then it's generally a more interesting battle, and typically if you've survived to that point, you're at least well on your way to victory. And specifically with FFXIII it often coincides with staggering a larger/more difficult enemy, when you're starting to unload the hurt.

Other concepts that require a good understanding of the video game medium include knowing when to pull back melodies and take a backseat in dialogue-heavy portions of games, knowing when music SHOULD be the focus, and understanding how the game will transition from one track to another. These are all concepts that linear media composers need to worry about to a much, MUCH lesser extent, since when everything happens generally would be already known in advance and not up to the whims of any specific player and how they partake of the game.

Visual novels and other games highly dependant on dialogue boxes and obfuscations for narration, for example, also have a much higher focus on music, as it's part of what tells the story and not an information overload of AWESOME MUSIC x AWESOME VISUALS. Properly written music for the storytelling portions of this subgenre of the medium also generally has its motifs right up at the start, rather than coming in later, since they tend to swap back and forth between tracks rather quickly to convey changes in mood, emotion, helping a gag along, etc.
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HOW DO YOU WRITE SUCH GOOD POSTS?
 
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Hiroki Kikuta's score for Secret of Mana. It's possibly the most technically complex game music of its era (e.g. the gamelan theme for the Dark Lich battle), and it still manages to evoke all kinds of emotions. Just an incredible set of music all around — and the Mike Oldfield-esque Secret of Mana+ arrange album is equally brilliant.
 
Thoraxes said:
I think almost all of the works by Masashi Hamauzu fall into this category. It says a lot that his music is academic enough that I was able to be approved to present his works as part of my master's thesis presentation years ago.

It's just excellent stuff all around, and if you check out his piano works (these scores have been published), the amount of nuance and technique on display is just nuts. In particular his focus on formal structure, motivic manipulation, chamber-style orchestration (Who the hell else do you know that can make a chamber ensemble of piano/bass/recorder/wood block/triangle be so amazing?), extended-tertian harmonies, and small-form works as areas he excels in are leaps and bounds above literally anyone one else in the industry today. Dude is on a completely different level.

Liking the end result or not is another thing entirely, but the craftsmanship on display is always way up there.
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Great post, and I definitely agree with him being a example of what the op is asking for.


I would also say the music of TLOU would,ideally meet the requirements op has mentioned.
 
Kirby Boss music deserves a mention. It often uses weird chords and jazz-inspired progressions that are accompanied by energetic synths and wildly varying melodies. Marx's theme in Superstar is a good example.
 
jb1234 said:
HOW DO YOU WRITE SUCH GOOD POSTS?
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This is a topic I've been thinking about a lot for a long time. Part of it is due to my work on a panel of judges screening for an annual game music awards event. Part of it are the discussions we have on GAF VGM awards and elsewhere on whether it's necessary to have played a game to be able to judge how good it is.

I feel like ultimately, what separates video game music from other media isn't its style or genre, especially considering how varied we are nowadays, but its function. It has to work in the game. The most heartbreaking, emotionally moving piece might be a work of art, but if it hits the player over the head too hard for something like the character losing his car keys, or if it overpowers and draws focus away too much from the dialogue, then it is a bad piece of video game music. Obviously this also goes into implementation, which is more of the music supervisor's job than the composer, but the composer has to be aware of its usage in the game, especially if it's not a linear segment and different parts of a piece of music can line up with a certain event in the game just based on how the player plays.

I feel it is a complete fallacy to judge game music the same way other media is judged. There definitely is a point to observing, analyzing and critiquing any piece of work based on its technical and creative standards, but I feel implementation and context is one facet that is largely ignored by many official/popular game soundtrack award contests.

Part of the reason here is largely practical. You can expect a film score judge, for example, to have watched close to every single film nominated for an awards ceremony. These scores are 2 hours long at most (usually), and in a very standardized format. Sit down with a TV and all the nominations for a couple of days, you're done

Conversely, you cannot expect anyone to have played every single game released in any given year, to an extent that they can make a sound decision on how the music works in context of the game. It simply isn't possible; there isn't enough hours in a day - games can take 2-10x the time investment of a movie, and they cover a smorgasbord of different methods of consumption - on your phone, on one of maybe 5 different consoles, on a PC, with motion controls, with VR, with plastic instrument controllers, etc.

I highly doubt anyone posting in any 'best game music' thread has played anywhere close to all of the suggestions by other posters in that given thread. I certainly can't make that claim either, which is why I'm always very conservative in floating an opinion that X, Y, or Z is one of the best examples in any given context. Because of that, the two ways that people generally judge video game music - simply rattling off music from the small subsection of games they've played, or conversely, simply listening to the soundtracks outside of the context of the game, are both flawed in their own way.

That being said, those threads and award shows still are great for discovering a shit ton of great new music in the medium though, so it's a good idea not to immediately discount them. (Unless it's simply another backslapping party featuring Civilization, CoD, Halo, maybe a Final Fantasy mention here and there, within a very cloistered circle of the industry)

tl;dr, I know this really isn't what the OP floated as a premise, but even then, best advice I can give is let go of your preconceived notion of what your best soundtrack is, check out some of the other poster's suggestions and discover a shit ton more of great game music. Your life will probably be enriched that way.

or we could just screw all that highbrow discourse and discussion and proudly proclam 'ct is the best game soundtrack of all time' with no elaboration because it must be such an obvious fact that anyone reading would already agree ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
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