The importance of musical scores in video games

How often do you just sit and listen to the themes in game? Final fantasy generally had a symphonic orchestra behind all of their games in resent memory however games have picked up on the importance of musical settings. Gears of war features a lot of brassy instruments, giving a loud and brash 'heroic' tone for the cogs and a set of deep bass precussion instruments backed by chello in order to give a feral and 'dark' tone to the locusts.

Disgaea offers a quirky and wholly unique soundtrack that compliments the quirky and wholly unique gameplay, offering more synthesized tones and switching between western, eastern, middle eastern, jazz, rock, adrenaline pumping and soul searching with little to no notice.

Mass effect offers a dual role with sounds and offers a genuinely deep and unique world via music and sounds for EVERYTHING giving a deep sense of realism to everything. The scores are measured and timed to fit with the scenes at hand and even offer different tones depending on the role you choose to side with.

Siren blood curse offers a few traditional instruments of japan when possible, but mostly offer an almost meta sort of horror vibe to the game, doubling up and ganging up on the player with the completely creepy noises from the shibito and environment.

I'd like to hear which games really pulled you into the game, set the mood, and generally felt and sounded fun enough to listen to for hours on end. If you're musically inclined or analytically prepared as well, give why it really moved you

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Perfect example, so epically Castlevania XD

Uncharted 3's "Ambushed" Track is one that regardless of what game im playing, i feel inspired when i listen to it XD
whenever this soundtrack kicked in, you always know some srs sheeit's goin down lol

very brassy yo, very heroic and action hero-esque. any more??

They do matter

xD i really didn't want the whole thread to devolve into just a video spam, and a little text expressing why a few are powerful would be great. The one winged angel song is iconic but pretty over done at this point xD and latin tones seems pretentious after he used em and the matrix series used them. the FF chocobo and first theme are good, though im more talking about in game more than just themes, and the FF1 is a remastered or later version from the original xD or else it'd sound like a 90's phone ring tone. The skyrim theme doesn't really appear in game either, only the opening menu.


the FFX, silent hill and mario songs however are all good examples of the mood setting, though the last one is insanely iconic (actually my morning alarm xD)

I love the theme in Uncharted 3 from the menu, it just make me want to go climb a mountain or do something inspirational


and the Morrowwind theme its the best!!


and this is here because its awesome

this talk is awesome guys, however i'd like you guys to offer a few less video's so we can continue a little before hitting the second and third pages xD


FF is best known for music, but generally all games are given symphonies

well its a lot easier to post examples then to try and sing in the forum >__> lol jk anyways Music is of great importance when it comes to gaming. Without the music you would feel differently. I don't think you would even have the same emotions towards a game if it had a different tone in song. Its weird to think about how Final Fantasy VIII would have been with out Balamb Gardens playing in the beginning. Also tends to trigger memories months to years later when we hear the same tune again. Even some of the tunes make me feel a certain way or I remember feeling a certain way when i played the game. For example, when i was about 16 I got really sick for about two weeks, so I decided to curl up to my copy of FFVIII. Now when I hear Balamb Gardens, I think of being at home with my mom cause she always took care of me when i was sick. There are other songs too tho like clock tower's scissor-man song. That song makes me either want to find the best hiding place, to find the closest object that I can mildly beat some one with or poop myself cause scissor-man was coming. Sometimes I feel its the music that makes the game. With out the epic Zelda theme playing when you start a new day in legend of Zelda: ocarina of time, there would be no epic hike to the next area on the map. I feel that with out that amazing score, you might not feel as motivated to progress through the game. Trying to play a game with out music stinks. I don't think I would have the patience for Super Mario Bros if it didn't have that really catchy theme. Another song from the game Deadly Premonition actually reminds me of the Mario theme but it also reminds me of when my brother was playing it and all i could hear was that whistling song for hours and it would still be stuck in my head whenever we left the house.
Now I leave you with more videos

I've got you all beat.

I loved like ALL the music from Bayonetta. <3

Tenrowsei wrote:

The skyrim theme doesn't really appear in game either, only the opening menu.

they play it when you begin a battle with a dragon. I gotta say whenever I bought skyrim and put it in the PS3 and watched the menu appeared and then the music i was pumped and ready for adventure. i've been playing more of it recently but the glitches with the dragons are reallybad Dx

Erin, you got it so right. When I first started getting into RPGs (when ff7 came out) I loved all the music from it, especially sephiroths theme, so epic. It continued to make itself greater with each final fantasy game that came out. It just fits so well into the mood and the story, I could not imagine another theme for any character. The fact that each character has their own theme songs is amazing.

And Joey, I totally knew you would love bayonetta, shes a fierce tight body suit ass kicking bitch lmao, shes uber sexual too.

good to see the thread sort of taking off, so i'll throw in something that bugs the crap out of me. games like dead space like to randomly increase the tension in the music just for a box falling or a black hallway with nothing in it. It was fine the first half dozen times, but the game shortly desensitized me from any real scares because it was so often and expected.

i'm sure we can all name a game who's music either grated us after the first few hours or were just outright annoying from the start

that's a much better way to scare people, lack of something more than something presented with music. something cool the first time in MGS4 was the weird intro sound to each chapter. After the second one i wanted to punch my tv