<\/div>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?\u00a0<\/p>\n
We could probably throw a few other local cultures into the pot, but you get the idea.<\/p>\n
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<\/a> and maybe a qanun<\/a> or a mizwad<\/a> here and there. And certainly a Persian flute<\/a> is an obvious choice for the long travel scenes across the Sandsea. Some fat dumbek beats<\/a> would feel right at home in the crowded markets of Rabanastre.<\/p>\n Instead, the entire soundtrack is basically European, mostly centered on strings and brass instruments.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now, Final Fantasy takes place in its own world and it doesn’t need<\/b> 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<\/b>.\u00a0<\/p>\n BUT…<\/p>\n It’s just that it feels weird<\/b> 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?<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 I’m not complaining about the quality; I was just hoping for something else.<\/p>\n My next complaint is with the overall…<\/p>\n 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. <\/p>\n That’s good music! But it shouldn’t ALL be that music.\u00a0<\/p>\n Let’s compare this to the music from a previous game, Final Fantasy X…<\/p>\n The Besaid Island theme<\/a> 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<\/a>. 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<\/a> 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<\/a>. 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<\/a> are what you’re looking for.<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n My final whine is with the overall…<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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<\/i>, the monsters gank you in the open world, so there’s no obvious point where the music should change.\u00a0<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Yes, I’m a hack<\/a> composer and no, I couldn’t do better myself. But still.<\/p>\nHomogeneity<\/h3>\n
Mood<\/h3>\n
<\/div>
<\/div>Final Thoughts<\/h3>\n
<\/div>