Nothing into Something
I’m sitting here listening to Schala’s Theme (from Chrono Trigger) and I just can’t help but wonder how it came to be. Maybe Yasunori Mitsuda saw some of the script in-progress, had an idea of the general character description, what music would be used near her theme, etc. but then how does that all translate into what he made? Surely a lot of it was improvisation and hammering away on a keyboard to see what sounded good, but that wasn’t everything.
As cliche as it sounds, the actual song itself tugs at one’s heartstrings while being a little uplifting at the same time. I guess that is because her character represented hope in a very dim world. There was a point where Mitsuda got sick and was temporarily hospitalized or at least removed from the project until he got better. With this being his first major production, he was ridiculously stressed out and more than likely completely enveloped in his work. It makes me wonder whether when he composed the piece, was he going through a rough time in his life that gave it that sense of emotional destruction, of a person whose been torn asunder. What if he had written it in a happier time in his life? Could’ve sounded completely different.
I know this entry is a little cheesy, but there’s something inherently interesting about composing for something that is not your own product with your own vision. Deep down buried between the notes, a piece in the life of that person remains. That’s what makes creation so powerful. There’s simply no way two people can be going through the same problems or be feeling the same way when crafting something, and as a result what they produce will surely be different. It’s a preservation of something greater than the media it’s presented in.
Makes me question whether a “masterpiece” can really exist. Then again, many masterpieces come about when an artist is the most dedicated to their style and form which allows the most amount of emotion to be injected into the work. I just hope I can look back fondly on whatever masterpiece I create.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery
I was checking out the recently released Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix at a friend’s house, and while the game seems “just fine” overall-you can only make a 15 year old game so fresh without actually changing the mechanics as other remakes do-I couldn’t help but be a little annoyed with the music they chose to use. In a nod to the community, the soundtrack is composed completely of Overclocked Remix material and is freely (and legally) available here, but anyone familiar with OCRemix knows that there is a wide variety of musical styles represented on the site, along with perhaps an even larger variety in actual quality of composition. I love that OCRemix exists, but many of these remixes do not fit in at all when played along side a game. They’re better for listening in your free time.
If I recall correctly, the game does include alternate soundtrack versions in case the default is not to the player’s liking. While this is a great middle ground, fighters really need to start taking their own approach to how music is laid out in the game since the tracks will be heard again and again and again. Super Smash Bros. Brawl actually paved the way for this. It allowed the player to attach a percent to each song which would determine how often it would show up (based on random selection). So I could give the CPS1 Ken Theme say 90% since I like it more, CPSII 75% so it’ll come up occasionally, and maybe the HD Remix 0% in case I never want it to show up. It was used to great effect in Brawl as the game had a ton of music produced for it and while some of it was fantastic, a few songs I never was in the mood for (Porky’s Theme anyone?) HD Remix, as a downloadable game has to deal with hard drive space so players who could care less about the soundtrack would have a lot of extra megs to download for no reason. But when Soulcalibur IV was released as a retail game, there was no good reason why they couldn’t do something like this. They ended up making the original SC soundtrack downloadable, but instead of using a percent system, the player had to toggle what song would play for each stage without any on-the-fly choices! You could mix and match with 1 stage having an SCIV song and another one from SC, but why can’t I just have both accessible without fiddling around in the options menu?
I can’t imagine this taking a lot of programming work to do. If anything it may come down more to issues with licensing and not wanting to give away all this music “for free” to the player. I’d love to see more developers following Brawl’s example though. Hell it might not even be such a bad idea for a jRPG which has the battle theme repeating ad nauseum to try this out as well. By the end of any jRPG, most battle themes have lost all emotion and excitement that the player initially attached to them. Let’s try keeping players on their toes rather than beating them over the head with repetition.
