FF12 Sightseeing Tour Part 12: Face the Music

By Shamus Posted Friday Apr 1, 2022

Filed under: Retrospectives 79 comments

This is the last entry in my series. But before I go, let me inflict one last gripe on you. After this, you’ll be glad to be rid of me. 

Over the years I’ve built up something of a reputation as a fussy nitpicker who hates everything and complains all the time. Sometimes I think that’s a bit unfair. I love games! I enjoy them all the time. It’s just that criticism is more spacious than praise. It takes one paragraph to describe why I like something and ten paragraphs to detail why I don’t. This results in a lot of articles that – going strictly by word count – are mostly negative. 

But today I’m going to really earn my reputation as an impossible-to-please critic. A complainer. A gripe merchant. An angry rain cloud in search of a parade. Because I’m going to dump on the one thing in this mess of a game that everyone agrees is aces.

Face The Music

Everybody loves the music. No matter how much people might bitch and moan about the characters, the plot, the themes, the gameplay, the license board, the costumes, or any of the other problem areas in this game, they always stop at the end to admit that despite all of these other problems, the music is really good. 

Everyone except me. I’m just not feeling it.


Yes, I’m aware that today is April 1st. No, this isn’t a prank post. I’m not kidding. I’m also not trying to get attention by doing some performative iconoclasm. I’m not thrilled about assaulting this sacred cow. But I’m honestly not crazy about this soundtrack and I even turned it off for a lot of my playtime. 

I should make it clear up front that none of the music is bad. The tracks themselves are wonderful work by a talented composer. My problem is three-fold. My first gripe is with the…

Style

Maybe I'm just hard to please, but I feel like brass and string aren't the best instruments to capture the city of Rabanastre.
Maybe I'm just hard to please, but I feel like brass and string aren't the best instruments to capture the city of Rabanastre.

The world we see in Final Fantasy XII – and the first city Rabanastre in particular – seems to be drawing from a loose Persian theme. You could say some of it looks a bit Turkish maybe? The ancient tombs certainly look Egyptian. You could maybe point to some of the outfits in Nalbina Fortress and claim a kinda Mumbai vibe? 

We could probably throw a few other local cultures into the pot, but you get the idea.

It’s a desert setting and the clothing styles and architecture both reflect that. But not the music. What I’d expect is to hear some Bendir drums and maybe a qanun or a mizwad here and there. And certainly a Persian flute is an obvious choice for the long travel scenes across the Sandsea. Some fat dumbek beats would feel right at home in the crowded markets of Rabanastre.

Instead, the entire soundtrack is basically European, mostly centered on strings and brass instruments. 

Now, Final Fantasy takes place in its own world and it doesn’t need to conform to Earth-style cultural patterns. If you want to make a world where quasi-highlander Scottsman types dress like Shaolin monks, eat tacos, and listen to bluegrass music all day, then you can do that. That sort of cultural mixtape is what the series is all about. If you want to argue that this quasi middle-East setting is musically all Euro, all the time, then I can’t say you’re wrong

BUT…

It’s just that it feels weird that the music never tries to evoke that weird sense of cultural mashup. It’s one big John Williams style score. The architects and the costume designers drew inspiration from a lot of different places. Why didn’t the composer do the same?

We end up with one style of music across the entire game. Given the distances we cover and the different places we visit, this feels like a missed opportunity. 

Maybe this is another case of my western expectations getting in the way. I hear a lot of this kind of music in other games. We’re up to our eyebrows in medieval euro-fantasy games here, and those games already feature a lot of this kind of music. For me the Final Fantasy XII soundtrack is like a movie set in Cairo that uses American top 40 music for its soundtrack.  I’m not complaining about the quality; I was just hoping for something else.

My next complaint is with the overall…

Homogeneity

Not only is the music all in one cultural style, but it’s also pretty darn homogenous in terms of mood. The vast majority of tracks are energetic things with soaring strings and major-key brass fanfare. It’s the sound of triumphant battle and lighthearted adventure.

That’s good music! But it shouldn’t ALL be that music. 

Let’s compare this to the music from a previous game, Final Fantasy X…

The Besaid Island theme is perfect if you want to head down to the beach to soak up some sun and watch Wakka and the boys suck at Blitzball. Or if you’re into melancholy and existential dread, then you can listen to To Zanarkand. If you’re a disgraced undead ronin and you want to walk that lonely road as you plot to take revenge on the religion you served in life, then Auron’s Theme is the music for you. If you need some energetic music while you fight Seymour’s latest hairdo, then you want the boss battle theme. If you want to hang out in the lobby of Rin’s Travel Agency while you try to talk your little brother into doing the “dodge 200 lightning bolts” challenge for you, then the laid back sounds of this track are what you’re looking for.

The point is that the soundtrack offers a wide variety of moods and styles. FFX doesn’t play the moody Auron’s theme while you’re bumming around on the beach with Wakka and it doesn’t play the battle music while you’re jogging across the Calm Lands. 

My final whine is with the overall…

Mood

Man, I really hate this dark-and-gritty reboot of Plants vs. Zombies.
Man, I really hate this dark-and-gritty reboot of Plants vs. Zombies.

Part of the problem here is that this is the first time that the Final Fantasy team broke from the old style of combat encounters. In the old days it worked more like a Pokemon type game: You’d be hiking around the open world and suddenly you’d get ambushed and yanked into a pocket dimension where the battle took place. When the battle was over, you’d return to the overworld map.

This shift in perspective gave the composer the opportunity to change the mood. The open world would feature low-key exploration music, and then the game would play the battle theme during the combat encounters. It was very modal. But here in Final Fantasy XII, the monsters gank you in the open world, so there’s no obvious point where the music should change. 

In an Elder Scrolls game, you might have a few minutes of exploration between combat encounters, so the game can shift between exploration and battle music as needed. But in FFXII, you switch between the two every ten seconds. You can’t switch between musical moods that fast, so it’s not clear what the music should be doing at any given moment. 

What I’d suggest is that the mood should shift when you move between zones. As it stands, we’ll hear the same music on the open streets of Rabanastre, by the city walls, in the crowded market, and out on the Giza Plains. It would be much better if the different places had smaller, less complicated arrangements that suited the local mood. 

The zones in FFXII are a bit small and you move to a new zone every couple of minutes. That’s just right for a musical shift. In particular, the music really needs to change when you move from the combat zones into a village of some sort. I’d be dicking around in town, shopping for swords and talking to the locals, and meanwhile the music is busy trumpeting this high adventure theme like Luke Skywalker is about to lock his S-foils in attack formation for a run on the Death Star. This dissonance is what ultimately drove me crazy until I turned the music off.

Yep. You guys totally bite.
Yep. You guys totally bite.

Also, I don’t think that this general mood of upbeat adventure really fits with the story they’re trying to tell. This story isn’t really a playful romp, nor does it lead to celebratory triumph. It’s hard to pin down the intended mood because the game sort of loses its mind here at the end. But if we go by the first half of the game, I’d expect the music to be mysterious, melancholy, or angsty. 

Incidentally, turning the music off was also pretty bad. It was really strange to get to the end of a boss fight and have my team posing heroically and mugging for the camera in complete silence. 

The Steam version of the game (Zodiac Age) offers three different options for music: Original, remix, and orchestral. All of them suffer from the same problem of endlessly looping dissonant intensity. In the end, I settled for turning the music down. 

So to reiterate: The music itself is fine, but I disapprove of how the game designer uses that music. The individual tracks are good, but it feels like they were written in isolation, without any consideration for the content and context of the game itself.

Yes, I’m a hack composer and no, I couldn’t do better myself. But still.

Final Thoughts

The characters don't get their own themes in this game. Which is fine. I imagine Basch's theme would just be sad trombone.
The characters don't get their own themes in this game. Which is fine. I imagine Basch's theme would just be sad trombone.

On the TTRPG podcast Fear the Boot, host Dan tells a story about a campaign gone wrong. The Game Master has twisted the story into nonsense, introducing various unbelievable things in order to force the plot where he wants it to go. Dan realizes that the world has become unmoored from the rules that govern it and that his input doesn’t actually matter. So when the GM comes around and asks Dan what he wants to do he says, “You know what? I flap my arms and fly away.”

This is the point in Final Fantasy XII where I flap my arms and fly away. The next section of the game is disjointed to the point of being surreal. Asking me to critique the ending of this game is like asking a mechanic to figure out why your car won’t start after it’s been stripped for parts, crushed, and left to rust for a decade. From this point on, there’s nothing I can say about the game that The Rocketeer isn’t already going to say with more insight and better jokes.

And so I leave you in his capable hands. Thanks for reading.

 


From The Archives:
 

79 thoughts on “FF12 Sightseeing Tour Part 12: Face the Music

  1. pseudonym says:

    So what soundtracks did you think of while reading this?

    I immediately thought about the Mass Effect soundtrack. The main theme, the Citadel theme, the thorian, the elevator music, virmire ride. All fit very well in the game and made it a classic for me.

    I am curious to your thoughts, all of twentysided!

    1. Geebs says:

      Homeworld 2, because it’s probably the most perfectly-matched videogame score I’ve ever heard.

      1. Lasius says:

        You misspelled “Outer Wilds”.

      2. Sabrdance says:

        Original Homeworld. Everything from Agnes Dei to the ending credits is pitch perfect to the moment.

        1. Mattias42 says:

          Homeworld: Cataclysm also has some amazing music.

          Not nearly as ‘fun’ listening as the main games, but there’s this real sense of creeping dread SLOWLY coming closer that fits that story like a dang glove.

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xF5VzptLUo&list=PLBSJGuLhR_uHO9AmCmpLBxz4BgarPZpRU&index=31

          It’s honestly really impressive how they managed to keep that sort of mood up for an entire game without it getting old.

    2. Shamus says:

      While writing this article? I went through a lot, but I think Diablo II and Final Fantasy X were foremost in my mind.

    3. Awetugiw says:

      I mostly thought about Nier Automata, because I think it handled its music extremely well, despite (like the more recent FF games) a lot of battles playing out in the world map.

    4. Syal says:

      What kind of thinking?

      If we’re thinking about games with music that really worked, Super Mario RPG has universally good music that fits the jolly tone (…and then Booster’s Tower has the Pulp Fiction sex dungeon theme.)

      …if we’re literally just thinking about music, the question about what tone the game should have got me thinking about Chrono Cross, Boogiepop Phantom and Serial Experiment Lain. Plus the Dark World theme from Link to the Past, and the battle theme from Dragon Quest 4 for some reason.

    5. tmtvl says:

      An open world with regular encounters in the world where you can get a lot of shifting back and forth between music? I think of Dragon’s Dogma (TBH, I think of Dark Arisen because the main menu music in OG DD was not really the best choice).

      1. Mye says:

        WHAAAAAAT?! The OG DD main title music was one of the greatest thing in the game, if not humanity!

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WeYkWUpccs

        (wait to 45 sec)

        1. Fred Starks says:

          I’m with you on this, the J-Rock opening masked by the forty-something seconds of mystical piano and strings is just great. It’s almost like an easter egg.

          Dragon’s Dogma music is really fantastic overall, particularly the escalation variations of Bitterblack Isle’s combat theme and the haunting and lonely pieces of choral vocals at night that call back to the game’s main theme (“land and sky- and seas yearn- finish the cycle- of eternal return”).

          And I’d honestly rather have the 45 second starting part of Into Free on loop rather than the Dark Arisen main theme. I just like it a lot more.

          1. tmtvl says:

            Yeah, the way the Dark Arisen music plays with snippets from Coils of Light is amazing.

            I wonder if the original main menu theme got cut out over copyright reasons like the Berserk armours.

            1. Fred Starks says:

              From last I heard, it was due to them just not refreshing the license for it. Probably cheaper to make an in-house title screen theme anyways.

    6. Rho says:

      Baldur’s Gate. It’s still one of the best soundtracks of all time and nobody remembers.

      1. Rho says:

        Actually, forgive me, I should actually explain *why* it was so good.

        First, it has considerable range. It’s not all bombast and horns blaring. As a soundtrack it takes you one a journey, sometimes comfortable and even convivial, sometimes dark and stressful. Each individual track works at setting a the mood without being too noticeable and contributes to the whole. They expertly combine diagetic sound and music to enhance the role-playing aspect while creating an effective mood for the player at once.

        1. Trevor says:

          Yes. None of the songs are that memorable they fade into the background really well, but 20 years down the line I hear a snippet of one of the songs and I’m instantly transported to a memory of playing the game where the song was playing.

          The original Mass Effect does this too. I don’t think I really noticed the Galaxy Map song when I was playing through the game, but I hear it now and I instantly have all the feelings about exploring the cosmos.

          1. Mattias42 says:

            I’m like that with the Planescape: Torment soundtrack. One snippet of the score, and I’m back in Sigil again.

            REALLY great score. It just sounds haunting and echoing, but somehow grand and beautiful at the same time. And the whole game is glorious, don’t get me wrong… but I really think that game doesn’t get nearly enough credit for its score compared with the writing & world-design.

      2. tmtvl says:

        The entire Baldur’s Gate trilogy has good music (though SoD doesn’t have an awesome menu theme like 1 and 2 have).

      3. MelfinatheBlue says:

        I remember!! I love it and had it and the Icewind Dale series ripped to CD for long car trips for years, then added Morrowind and Oblivion when they came out. Man, I miss that CD binder….

    7. RamblePak64 says:

      I, uh, had metal on while I was reading, so… that, I suppose…

      Otherwise, probably the Final Fantasy Tactics soundtrack since I was wondering if it shared the same composer. And it does! Dude did a lot of work with Matsuno, and for most of his works he’s a fitting composer. This one, however, really does seem to be going for a single adventurous tone. Shamus notes that it might be because of the change of style, where combat could be possible on the same map at any moment, but I feel even at this point in the game industry developers were exploring and using dynamic shifts in music. I mean, Devil May Cry certainly would go from creepy atmospheric tones to industrial goth rock at the drop of a hat, so no real reason for that here.

      Could it be a remnant of the MMO development? I’m not much of an MMO player so I don’t know how the music typically operates, but it’s possible that adventurous tone was intended to keep player’s in a certain mindset. Not that it’d be a good idea, just… a curiosity, I suppose.

    8. MelTorefas says:

      Definitely Final Fantasy XIV. That game has some of the absolute best music and USE of music I have ever encountered in a video game, *especially* in the Shadowbringers expansion. It has actually supplanted FF6 as my favorite final fantasy music; I actually put the Shadowbringers soundtrack on par with Chrono Trigger. (To be clear, while I do think Shadowbringers is the best, there is absolutely amazing music all throughout the game.)

      In terms of music use in the game I think what I like best is how they do boss music. Major bosses frequently have multiple phases to their music to match up the actual mechanical phases of the boss fight, and it can result in truly fantastic moments when both the boss and the music start going all-out. I’m also fond of how each zone has a distinct daytime theme and nighttime theme.

    9. Xamenos says:

      Chrono Trigger has the best soundtrack of all time.

      1. tmtvl says:

        I could listen to the 1000AD Guardia theme for hours, it’s fantastic.

        1. Xamenos says:

          For me it’s Schala’s Theme and Corridors of Time. But the whole soundtrack is top notch, really.

      2. Sillius Sauras says:

        Chrono Trigger did have a good sound track, but the best video game sound track (strangely) is Bible Black (sfw).

      3. Nixorbo says:

        I respect your opinion and like that you brought it up, but Chrono Cross’s soundtrack completely surpasses it.

        Although Chrono Cross doesn’t have a song that sounds like Never Gonna Give You Up, hmm …

    10. tmtvl says:

      Well, as long as we’re talking about great soundtracks, may as well namedrop Castlevania Symphony of the Night.
      I mean, it’s got “Symphony” in the name, so…
      It’s also a good example of giving various areas their own musical identity, you could probably navigate the castle by ear.

    11. Retsam says:

      Well coincidentally, I was listening to Distant Worlds II, an album of ochestrated music from the Final Fantasy games. And, rather unsurprisingly FFXII isn’t represented at all. And I can’t really imagine any track from the game that would fit.

      So yeah, I don’t think Shamus is really being heretical here – FFXII’s music is just kind of forgettable. IMO, it’s not bad, but it’s basically just accompaniment that mostly fades into the background when I’m playing.

    12. Paul says:

      I was thinking of and listening to the Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters soundtrack. Both Pokitaru tracks are great.

    13. Lars says:

      I had Appeals Outcast music in mind. That was grand when it needed and all the different biomes had their theme including an oriental one in the main city.

  2. Daimbert says:

    Over the years I’ve built up something of a reputation as a fussy nitpicker who hates everything and complains all the time. Sometimes I think that’s a bit unfair. I love games! I enjoy them all the time. It’s just that criticism is more spacious than praise. It takes one paragraph to describe why I like something and ten paragraphs to detail why I don’t. This results in a lot of articles that – going strictly by word count – are mostly negative.

    In my experience, in particular from recently talking about “House M.D.”, another big reason is that bad things really stand out while things can be good without being particularly remarkable. For a show that I liked watching, I spent a lot of time talking about the things that it did wrong that bugged me, and most of my positive comments were fairly short ones on episodes that really worked, characters I really liked, and some changes over time that I really liked. In general, it’s easier for bad things to be really noticeable and so be things a commentator wants to talk about than for good things to be so monumentally good that you feel compelled to comment on it. So the things that you most want to comment on are the negatives, and so the works you most want to talk about are the ones that are overall bad, and if your selection process for writing or watching is biased towards that — I have that for horror movies since I buy the cheap ones — then you can come across as really negative just from that, even if you like the works you’re pointing out the negatives in and talking more about the works you didn’t care for than the ones you did.

    But here in Final Fantasy XII, the monsters gank you in the open world, so there’s no obvious point where the music should change.

    Games like Mass Effect and The Old Republic tend to switch the music when the encounter starts. In Mass Effect, that means that when you hear the music change you’re going to be attacked and can react accordingly. The Old Republic also has the issue that you get encounters pretty quickly, but at least those are usually player-triggered, but again its music switches when the fight starts, which it has to know about anyway so that it can disable options that don’t work in combat (like stealth). So they probably could have done better than they did.

    The zones in FFXII are a bit small and you move to a new zone every couple of minutes. That’s just right for a musical shift. In particular, the music really needs to change when you move from the combat zones into a village of some sort. I’d be dicking around in town, shopping for swords and talking to the locals, and meanwhile the music is busy trumpeting this high adventure theme like Luke Skywalker is about to lock his S-foils in attack formation for a run on the Death Star. This dissonance is what ultimately drove me crazy until I turned the music off.

    On the other hand, I once got the James Bond theme stuck in my head because I was listening to the soundtrack, and nothing is more epic than having that running through your head while you’re walking around doing your grocery shopping [grin].

    1. MelfinatheBlue says:

      I will see your Bond theme and raise you a mix of Sailing For Adventure and Cabin Fever from Muppet Treasure Island while doing dishes at 3 am in an empty WH. Slightly less epic, but I know all the words and can belt them out, thus startling the crap out of my coworker…

    2. Mikko Lukkarinen says:

      In my experience, in particular from recently talking about “House M.D.”, another big reason is that bad things really stand out while things can be good without being particularly remarkable. For a show that I liked watching, I spent a lot of time talking about the things that it did wrong that bugged me, and most of my positive comments were fairly short ones on episodes that really worked, characters I really liked, and some changes over time that I really liked. In general, it’s easier for bad things to be really noticeable and so be things a commentator wants to talk about than for good things to be so monumentally good that you feel compelled to comment on it.

      The bad is also really easy to talk about; this is shit, why is it shit, what would you change or remove to make it not shit, etc. If you want to say anything meaningful about the good, you might need some level of expertise in the subject, otherwise you may end up with “I liked it” stretched out to 5 paragraphs and a thumbs up (Yes, I have stopped reading positive Steam reviews, how did you know?)

  3. The Rocketeer says:

    Okay, that tears it!

    Shamus, maybe it would have been better if I’d brought this up privately, and in hindsight I regret not doing it, but not a single one of your entries on this game has been titled after a deep cut Pink Floyd reference. Now, two days after A Saucerful of Secrets (the live version from Ummagumma Side 1) you name this post for an Electric Light Orchestra album? Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge ELO fan, but… Face the Music? For this game? What’s the theme? Why not Balance of Power? Not my favorite ELO, but neither is Face the Music, and there’s a ton to work with there! Just Side B of A New World Record would have been killer for this game. Frankly I’m wondering if you only now realized how badly you blew it passing up Eldorado for your PREY series, or Time for SWJFO. “Remember the good old 1980’s?” Why, we sure do, Jeff! Everyone except Shamus, I guess!

    It’s a good thing Sakimoto took over for this game; Nobuo Uematsu would sit crying behind the wheel of his Armadillo tank if he saw this.

    I guess the music in Final Fantasy XII could be better, though. I often kinda wish Sakimoto had wider range as a composer.

    1. tmtvl says:

      Shamus doesn’t remember the 1980s just like Glenn Hughes.
      In Shamus’ case it’s because he was stuck in the ’70s.

    2. RamblePak64 says:

      In regards to Sakimoto, that’s the weird thing, though. Even if you look at Final Fantasy Tactics, which is mostly just different kinds of battle music, he had greater variety in terms of emotion. However, he certainly does specialize in a more classically orchestral sound, which is why he worked for most of the Western European styled games that Matsuno directed.

      Which just all the more has FFXII being quite the odd ball of a game.

  4. ContribuTor says:

    On Shamus’ first point, I honestly wonder if this makes more sense from a Japanese perspective – everything is supposed to feel “foreign” and they don’t worry about distinguishing different types of foreign. A point I dimly recall – in FFVI, they wanted to make the first main character have a really unusual, exotic name. So they named her (in the Japanese version) Tina.

    On your second point about being homogenous, it’s not quite the same, but my first parallel is the radio stations in Fallout 3. They do a terrific job setting an overall mood of the game, they’re appropriate to the setting, and I just can’t listen to them for more than 15-20 minutes without turning them off. Because even if I like the Ink Spots and 50’s showtimes, they’re way to homogenous to be an appropriate backdrop to most of what I’m doing. It’s fun to roast someone with a flamer to “I don’t want to set the world on fire” the first time. On the 50th it’s lost it’s novelty, and it’s just kinda a weird choice to be listening to.

    1. Henson says:

      I’m not at all convinced the European-style orchestra sounds foreign to the Japanese. The country has been westernized for a really long time now, and so much of their own film music has drawn upon the same orchestral tradition.

      1. tmtvl says:

        I would expect that Gagaku would sound just as foreign to the average Japanese gamer as classic orchestral music.

      2. MelfinatheBlue says:

        I remember learning about a tradition of bluegrass music in Japan brought over by the GIs but I believe it’s a weird little niche community, like the yodeling guy (who is awesome). But I know western music is fairly big there, even if the terms are different (tutored a Japanese student in music history, she knew the theory but not the American terms).

    2. Japan is not the West, but if they wanted a foreign musical feel, vaguely European classical would be the weakest sort of foreign they could get. Japan almost has a better Western Classical culture than the actual West does. It’d be like scoring something targeted at American urbanites in country music… I mean, yes, it’s “foreign” to the target audience, but a very weak form of foreign compared to something authentically Asian or African, to name entire continent’s worth of things that would sound truly foreign.

      (And in the 21st century, I have straight up heard more Western classical music being composed in Japan than the US. In the US it’s all 21st century nihilism in what has become of the classical music community. Stuff that makes Philip Glass sound positively Baroque.)

      Possibly that was the goal, though. I could see that sort of direction coming down.

      In which case we can criticize it for being a very tepid choice, and those often don’t work out well.

      1. ContribuTor says:

        Right. I don’t claim it would be in any way a BETTER choice for “foreign sounding” than something that was genuinely not well known (Persian flute? Sitar? African tribal drums?). At best it would be a lazy “eh, you know – something foreign-sounding” safe choice.

        Just positing that it MIGHT slightly less nonsensical to an audience that associates those sounds with a “foreign” vibe

    3. Daimbert says:

      On Shamus’ first point, I honestly wonder if this makes more sense from a Japanese perspective – everything is supposed to feel “foreign” and they don’t worry about distinguishing different types of foreign.

      Games like Suikoden III, on the other hand, HAVE divided up their themes by what the area is supposed to be representing, so that doesn’t really seem to work.

      1. Thomas says:

        I’m also remembering FFVII did something totally different for their ‘native American’ (big airquotes) region, so expecting something a bit Persian in Rabanastre isn’t out of order.

        1. ElementalAlchemist says:

          The Cosmo Canyon theme?

    4. AncientSpark says:

      If that’s the argument, then it’s undoubtably an argument that has changed over the years. Granted, FFXIV is my go-to example for Final Fantasy variety and that’s been done by a different lead composer after the initial game, but considering FFXIV goes goddamn everywhere in terms of OST (from classical orchestra to metal to western rock to J-rock to basically-a-super-robot-anime-theme-song to vaguely Indian-Persian to vaguely Southeast Asian themes, etc.), they’ve certainly gone back on the idea that “vaguely European orchestra is foreign”.

  5. Joshua says:

    For me, I always think of VI when it comes to music. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m playing V and although there’s some distinctive music, I tend to find it somewhat jarring because there’s a definite focus on late 80’s electric guitars that always just feels “off” to me. I guess that would make VI homogeneous according to Shamus’s categories, but it’s definitely not all the same mood. Indeed, the mood and gameplay/story synchronization is superb in that game.

    Meanwhile, I think IV is fine and serviceable, I guess? It’s also been a couple of years since I last played IX, so I don’t remember it too much, and VII not at all.

    1. Dreadjaws says:

      Indeed. VI is my go to example on how to perfectly score a videogame. I like IV’s boss battle music, but I really don’t remember much else.

    2. Hal says:

      FF6 is the only game where I bought the soundtrack. Such a feat for the technology of the time.

      FF4 had a very evocative sound track, but it gets overshadowed by FF6 for the console generation they came from.

  6. Syal says:

    I’m realizing the only FF12 tune I can recall is Lowtown’s “flea market for cool kids” theme. Rabanastre, Nalbina, the outside areas, Giruvegan, boss fights… I don’t remember any of them.

    1. Yeah, I’ve got nothing in my personal internal soundtrack for FF XII. FFX I’ve got a good dozen I could hum for you right now. I remember the FFX-2 opening, 1000 Words, and the opening pop track (dunno it’s title but it’s the one that starts with “what can I do for you”), which is almost all the original music FFX-2 actually had.

      For this post I decided to go YouTube the XII opening…. and geeze, no wonder I don’t remember it. What may be the most painfully generic re-iteration of the Final Fantasy arpeggio opening there is given the musical technology of the era, and completely forgettable Marvel-esque vaguely excited orchestra with no real tune to it.

      (Possibly an unpopular opinion here, given how many people love the FF arpeggio theme.. but you love it because it’s attached to something you love. Simply arpeggio-ing a couple of chords for your melody is almost canonically bad “my first song”-level composition. In the original FF composer’s defense, they were very, very pressed for time. In the FFXII composer’s defense, it’s really hard to do anything interesting with it, because it’s just banging out a chord. Even the most interesting spins I’ve heard in the series is still not very interesting. But that’s why a composer for a modern FF game should at most sort of reference it and move on, and the reference is optional. It’s one of the worst themes a franchise got tagged with I know.)

      1. Dreadjaws says:

        This sort of thing reminds me of the Harry Potter’s intro music (Hedwig’s theme). At the time of the first movie it was a whimsical, cutesy theme, but as the series got progressively darker it really didn’t fit the mood anymore. The fourth film manages to give it a dark twist that’s very good, but then the fifth one barely tries and it ends up feeling dissonant with the overall mood of the film. The sixth one referenced it for a couple of notes and then the latter ones outright ignored it.

        1. Yes, the fourth movie’s iteration of it is my favorite. It’s a very simple major/minor inversion, but it worked perfectly.

  7. Daimbert says:

    On a similar note to themes, I have listened to the Persona 3 and Persona 4 soundtracks — I would do the same for Persona 5 but I have the other two as actual CDs and haven’t really looked for that for Persona 5 — and noticed that I think that the music is better in Persona 3 while the music in Persona 4 is more thematic. When listening to Persona 3 I think that the song is good but not so much about where it’s used, while when listening to Persona 4 I think less of the music but more of “That’s Rise’s dungeon/that’s Kanji’s dungeon”. So the latter is an example where making the songs thematic really works even if musically it isn’t as strong as the former.

    1. tmtvl says:

      It probably matters that in P4 you have Yukiko’s dungeon, Kanji’s dungeon,… whereas in P3 you’ve got what, “ah yes, that’s the yellowish part of Tartarus.”

      At least you can ask Fuuka to play you some music.

  8. Yal says:

    We sort of have a solution for the “How do we transition seamlessly between a laid-back exploration track and an intense battle theme?” question already: have two versions of the same track, a calm overworld version and a battle version with more drums, argipeggiated rhythms etc, and then crossfade between them whenever the player enters/leaves battle. Sure, it’s not as big of a deal as a change to a completely different battle track, but random battles usually are trivial quantity-over-quality affairs so maybe that’s actually a positive?

    This technology was around in the N64 days (Banjo-Kazooie being the prime example) so it should’ve been just as available a console generation later. But alas, another victim to CD loading times…

    It’s been getting a resurgence lately now when load time and disk space are less of an issue, though: both Hollow Knight and DUSK does the exploration-and-battle-versions jig, and in both cases I didn’t even realize until I started listening to the soundtracks separate from the games because it’s just too dang subtle.

    1. Veylon says:

      FFXII – like the Final Fantasies before it – uses a MIDI-based soundtrack. The songs are already being created on the fly using various sound samples. It would’ve been technically easy enough to load up a couple extra samples and mix them in in when appropriate if that had been desired. CD loading times are no excuse.

      It’s oddly rare to actually do transitions like this. I would think this would be the go-to solution any time there isn’t a separate battle area from the field.

    2. Philadelphus says:

      FTL: Faster Than Light does the “fading between exploration and battle versions of the same track” thing, and it’s fantastic. It popped into my head as I was reading the post. You know things are going down when the percussion starts coming to the fore…

    3. Syal says:

      Something to keep in mind; FF12’s battles are often a few seconds apart. Some levels like the Sandsea have a Diablo-style enemy concentration. Maybe heavier, because they respawn behind you.

      1. Chad+Miller says:

        Indeed, the problem with various suggestions to amp up the music “during a fight” is that in many if not most areas it’s nearly always “during a fight”. You’d just end up with the opposite problem of “this game is constantly trying to act like I should still be excited when I’ve been having my party members kill skeletons on autopilot for the last six minutes.”

        It’s the same reason I was surprised “the fanfare” showed up at all; it’s the one distinct Final Fantasy where you don’t have clearly delineated “during combat” vs. “exploration” states in a dungeon crawl (even as compared to the more action-y Final Fantasy XV)

    4. Hal says:

      I can’t recall Hollow Knight having different versions of the same music depending on in/out of combat. Metroidvania games seem like they’d struggle with that sort of thing because you’re always going in and out of it, y’know?

      That game had an amazing sound track, though. So, so good. Very good at fitting the music to the mood and tone of locations.

  9. Dreadjaws says:

    Typolice:

    Man, I really hate this dark-and-gritty reboot of Plans vs. Zombies.

    Though, to be fair, planning against zombies IS a good approach.

    I can’t really comment much on this because I don’t remember any music from this game (or FFXIII, for that matter). All the previous games in the series have had at the very least one theme or two I’ve found memorable (VI being the one with the most of them), but trying to listen to a few tracks on Youtube right now all this music felt alien to me. Yet I will take the chance to complain about FFXIII again: the boss battle music is trash. It feels like they deliberately make it sound of of tune at parts, but that doesn’t mean it’s not jarring. I can’t speak on technical terms because I’m not knowledgeable but the music in these games has gone downhill ever since the PS2 era.

    How to fix the particular problem you mention here, though? Well, that’s another subject. Monkey Island 2 introduced the iMUSE system, where adjacent areas on the same part of the map would have similar base music with a few notable differences, and transitioning from one to the next would feel smooth like a train changing tracks, where you didn’t really notice when you changed direction unless you were deliberately paying attention. Not sure why this sort of thing didn’t become more common. I think something similar could have been done in FFXII, where you could have a normal music while you were walking around whose intensity went up if you entered combat.

    But I don’t know, I’m not a music expert or anything even remotely close.

    1. Mye says:

      I’ll always be in line to beat up on FF13, but the soundtrack is pretty good, better than 12 imo which I also find to be merely good, which put it pretty much at the bottom of the FF franchise soundtrack.

      The boss theme (saber edge) is a great remake of the usual FF battle theme with good “momentum”:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW9Alr38Ha0

      The final dungeon theme is great and really fit the dungeon itself (which sadly does not fit the game):
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4OyzhDP_UI

      It got good range, from calmer theme:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86YjnTRo6Rg

      To religious choir:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GD65eBqcJyo

      To more bombastic moment:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CCJ0RGHKII

      1. Thomas says:

        Those strings of the main battle theme of FFXIII are engraved onto my brain. If anything it’s closer to ‘too memorable’ than ‘not memorable enough’

  10. John says:

    I’ll be honest. I can’t tell one sweeping orchestral soundtrack from another, which is sad because I genuinely like that kind of music. The problem is that while I’m playing a video game or even watching a movie I’m usually paying attention to something other than the music. I may remember that I liked the music while I was playing a game but I can almost never remember the music itself later on. For a soundtrack to stick in my head, it usually has to be (a) incredibly catchy or (b) in a genre or style that I don’t normally listen to. I am much more likely to remember something by Frank Klepacki (Westwood) or Darren Korb (Supergiant) than I am to remember anything with an orchestra, no matter how good that orchestra is, unless that orchestra is playing something by, say, John Williams.

    All of which is to say that, had I played Final Fantasy XII, I probably wouldn’t be able to critique the soundtrack because I probably wouldn’t remember it. So I guess I’m with Shamus on this one. Do something unusual with the soundtrack! One of the best film scores of all time, and one which I can easily remember, is the score for The Third Man, which is played entirely on a single zither.

  11. The Nick says:

    I mistook Shamus for the Rocketeer and was confused about the shift in tone and writing style.

    But at the end, when I saw a “bad car analogy”, I immediately knew that’s Shamus.

  12. Eppcetera says:

    I’ve been reading Shamus’s posts for a while, so I was glad to see the series on Final Fantasy XII, which I just replayed last year (and was astonished by how much worse its last act is than I remembered).

    As for the music in Final Fantasy XII, I think it’s fine. “Inoffensive” is another word I might use, if I’m feeling less charitable. I don’t think FFXII has a single track that annoys me, but it has hardly any that I really enjoy. The tracks are all fine, not bad, but rarely great. I like some of Hitoshi Sakimoto’s other game soundtracks a lot more (including his OST to Final Fantasy Tactics), and I much prefer many of Nobuo Uematsu’s Final Fantasy soundtracks over FFXII’s music.

  13. Paul Spooner says:

    I think you’re giving the sound team too much of a pass Shamus. Why couldn’t they have recorded the instrumental sections as separate tracks? Then you could at least have the strings and woodwinds going in the background while exploring, and then turn up the brass and timpani when it’s fight time. This would go a long ways toward addressing the short-term mood problems. Then you break the songs up into several loop-able sections and progress them as you move through a zone to fix the homogeneity. And finally, as you suggest, each zone should have an appropriate musical style. It’s not like this is even that hard to do, and certainly shouldn’t be out of range for a professional composer. These people should be bringing their AAA game to AAA games! Not phoning it in on whatever rote schlock the board of directors rubber-stamped to play in the background of the marketing bling reel.

  14. Tonich says:

    Shamus, I’m totally with you on the music – and I’m absolutely sure there are waaay more people who share your opinion than you make it out to be. :) I don’t think going for the Western quasi-classical orchestral score is not as much of a problem here (Dark Souls has a whole soundtrack of Western-style bombastic brass-heavy boss themes, and I don’t believe they ever sound off), as much as how homogenised it all was. Plus, there’s one more point here, I think. Call me biased, but I think Nobuo Uematsu is a genius, and his music for the previous Final Fantasy installments is the high watermark for the medium. So when he stepped down, his successors had a really huge pair of shoes to fill. :)
    I’d even go and say that no matter how good the music could have been, it would still have felt like a letdown. Once you’ve had something brilliant, you wouldn’t settle for merely “good”, right?

    1. tmtvl says:

      Thing with Dark Souls is you only hear music in boss battles (okay, and Firelink Shrine), so you tend to be a bit too busy to pay attention. Though Pinwheel sounds unique, which is too bad because he’s down before it can really kick it.

      1. Tonich says:

        True, I wouldn’t listen to Dark Souls’ music separately, but I still think it captures the scale of battles perfectly. And I love the delightful sombiety of Gwyn battle theme.
        My point is, a soutrack doesn’t have to be memorable, but it must fit the visuals and pacing of the game. That’s actually my gripe with Final Fantasy 7 Remake: the music is still brilliant on its own, but the game has changed. The pacing, the mood, the visuals – everything’s different, and I just can’t stand to hear the same musical themes (even in new arrangements).

  15. Michael G says:

    “On the TTRPG podcast Fear the Boot, host Dan tells a story about a campaign gone wrong. ” Hmm, that sounds interesting, I’ll follow the link and give it a listen. Oh, it’s just a link to the front page and they have 593 episodes. Never mind that plan of listening to that story. I don’t suppose you could give an episode number?

    1. Shamus says:

      I’m sorry to say I have no idea. It MIGHT be on the episode I was in.

      https://www.feartheboot.com/ftb/index.php/archives/192

      But I don’t know. I heard the story somewhere around that time. (2007)

      1. Michael G says:

        No worries. I ended up listening to the latest episode they have and it was quite enjoyable, so thanks for introducing me to a new show to listen to!

  16. Mr. Wolf says:

    As somebody whose entire experience with FF12 is in text and the occasional still image, I have no idea what you’re talking about.

  17. Gargamel Le Noir says:

    Chrono Trigger didn’t have pocket dimensions, the enemies attacked you on the exploration map but the time during which everyone took battle position was enough for a smooth switch of music. It was yet another mechanic Chrono Trigger that was vastly superior to other JRPGs.

  18. TLN says:

    I think this is the first time I’ve heard that the music for 12 is universally loved. There’s certainly nothing wrong with it, it’s perfectly serviceable, but I couldn’t tell you a single track or hum a single tune from it. The five prior games from the series (not counting 11) I could probably at least half the songs from the soundtracks given enough time, 12 I would put in the same camp as 13 of “well it has music, I guess”.

    1. Scerro says:

      Ahh, I disagree that 12 and 13 are in the same camp. While I have played half of FF12, and none of FF13, I know Sunleth Waterscape, Lightning’s Theme, Blinded by the Light, and the Prelude are all quite good. Sure, I don’t like them quite as much as some older FF tracks, but I also don’t have any gameplay to link them to.

      Meanwhile I played FF12 and don’t have any tracks I can pull up as that amazing. The only reason why I can even pull one out as “good” is because it was re-arranged and used for a final boss of an alliance raid – Esper Battle theme for the 2nd Stormblood Alliance raid.

  19. Drathnoxis says:

    Yes, the music always bugged me about the game as well. This was the first Final Fantasy game that Nobuo Uematsu did not work on, and I’ve always felt it suffered greatly from his departure. No memorable or evocative tunes perfectly encapsulating the mood of a scene or location, just really busy tracks of orchestras soaring all over the place.

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