The Importance of soundtrack for video games...

[The Damned]

I guess that's the key of it; don't make your music more interesting than the game, at any given point.

Haa haa! Short, succinct, and true. Oh, so true.

[Z3120]

Well, how do you define music? When I hear music from Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes and enter somewhere like the Hall it feels ambient - nothing prominent stands out except it helps instill a sense of the environment like the sound of footsteps, the emptiness of the place and etc. But you wouldn't find me wanting to listen to "room noises": for lack of a better word, sorry. That's one type of immersion music can provide, which I can appreciate, but seldom, if at all, want to listen to solely by itself.

What I like to hear and identity as music in games is the other type of immersion music brings similar to a movie experience like others have stated. There's a certain joyous pleasure to me to associate with a character theme or town theme and recall the experience(s) and emotion(s) that happened when I listen to that theme again or hear it repeated later (or in variations).

I find music to be integral to the game, but what's your genre of music preference? People have different tastes so one's experience could differ from another how emotionally attach they were to a game. I remember the time I first played Saga Frontier 2. I thought it was such an amazing game. Years later, I realized I was more in love with the music than the game itself. The game wasn't bad but it placed higher on my favorites list than games where I wasn't as connected musically, but still enjoyed, like Grandia 2. However, my friend found nothing remotely interesting to SF2; it was pretty average to him overall and boring in some cases. Music helped me add missing ethereal qualities I can't fathom to say exactly but I'll try to. Like in Chrono Cross, I identified more with Serge as a character rather than an extension of me when I listen to his town theme Arni Village ~ Home. I substituted a story I created musically and placed or replaced a perception I had to connect. I don't really know where I was going with this... perhaps someone might make it clearer.

Then again, if the characters are annoying and the story isn't so good either, music can easily take a backseat to everything else if I can't connect to the game's world.

[The Damned]

I think the use of music is more a matter of being appropriate for the situation.

Like, Homeworld's music I find less than suitable. Most of it seems too ambient for what the game is. There's no real battle music to get behind and feel like it's a space battle. It may set a mod, but it doesn't seem to be setting the mood that I want when I have a fleet of battleships. There's no "charging into the cannon-fire" or "to the last man!" or any kind of epic battle music. "I've got a giant fleet of ships, I'm going out to kick the ass of those that blew up my planet, and I'm not stopping until it's over" is not conveyed by mellow, soft ambient stuff. I want a battle theme to fight and die to, not fall asleep to.

I wonder if the Homeworld crews intentionally paced the music that way to help lower the player's stress levels. There are times when you can practically stroke out from the frustration as goddamn fighter and destroyers are cutting through your defenses.

[Dafydd]

I love the Homeworld series, but the soundtrack could have been a lot better.

I wrote a long post about this but then my cookies were cleared for whatever reason, so you'll just have to do with "I disagree".

[Avatar of Justice]

As a casual gamer, the music in a game is sometimes the only reason i play a game nowadays. Games can be a pretty incredible synthesis of the arts if done right/well. If only Wagner was alive today...

Gesamtkunstwerk for the win.

[I-n-j-i-n]

I'm sorry, but I'm not buying that StarCraft's music didn't fit the action. It so totally did. I'm not listening to that argument any further.

As for Yoko Kanno, while she does great work, the sci-fi orchestrals she does is a bit plain vanilla. Everyone does it and in many cases in anime, they do it better than she does. She gets WAY too much credit just because she dabbles in many genres. She's great at all of them, but master of none.

[The Damned]

I wrote a long post about this but then my cookies were cleared for whatever reason, so you'll just have to do with "I disagree".

And I disagree with your disagreeing.

Personal choices... whatever.

[kriss17388]

thank you all for your ideas and opinions, it has been very helpful,

this has turned out to be a good topic, lets keep this rolling,

very interesting stuff,

the soundtrack to a good game is very important to me,

i think its very important to alot of people, even if they dont know it,

like on a sub-conscious level,

thanks