Extensive first thoughts after finishing Deadfire's first playthrough

[tela2k]

You are most welcome. Curious, how much time percentage wise are you spending in Neketaka?

 

 

I'd asstimate anything from 20 to 50%. I'll just say a lot more than I thought, since the city is much larger than I expected. I binged the whole game and I think I spent the first two days only in Neketaka before jumping on my ship and going exploring. Even after that you always return there for quests for three factions and bounties and shops so yeah. A large portion of the game, so fortunately I personally loved Neketaka    

[Justin Bell]

 

 

I’d like to use this opportunity to say that I absolutely love the music in Neketaka! It makes me feel so... relaxed. Perfect for a hub.

 

Especially the Queen’s Berth track. Thank you for that piece.

You are most welcome. Curious, how much time percentage wise are you spending in Neketaka?

Hmm. I'm rather slow when it comes to playing through games, and I'm still rather early into the game, so... I'd say it's been around half of the time logged on the save.

Interesting! I mean it makes sense, Neketaka has tons of content. I wonder if that's a common experience?

[Justin Bell]

 

You are most welcome. Curious, how much time percentage wise are you spending in Neketaka?

 

I'd asstimate anything from 20 to 50%. I'll just say a lot more than I thought, since the city is much larger than I expected. I binged the whole game and I think I spent the first two days only in Neketaka before jumping on my ship and going exploring. Even after that you always return there for quests for three factions and bounties and shops so yeah. A large portion of the game, so fortunately I personally loved Neketaka

Makes perfect sense. A lot of effort was put into Neketaka across the board, including its exploration music. It was sort of top priority for the sound team and I.

[Justin Bell]

 

Responding to music parts of the thread... Thanks for all the music feedback folks. Something we haven't really talked about is that the music is reactive in PoE2! It changes depending on whether or not you're sneaking, walking around, or are in a conversation/scripted interaction (the choose your own adventure parts). The idea was to keep it from sounding too static over time.

 

The music is constructed of 3 layers and is additive. Sneaking is just one layer, typically basses, harp, and some accompaniment, and you'll always hear that. Exploration is sneaking + a second layer that includes more accompaniment, countermelodies, and some melodic content. Conversations have all previous layers + another one that is primarily melodic. Transitions between layers aren't instantaneous, and generally only happen at the beginning of new musical phrases. I find it interesting to be able to focus on the different components of a given piece of music.

 

Sneak + explore + conversation is what you hear in the soundtrack, and can be considered the full piece of music. We recorded each section of the orchestra separately to allow for this. Not every track is reactive - combat music isn't - but many are. Even Twin Elms redux is reactive; we re-recorded it just so we can make it reactive!

Hi Justin, just wanted to say that the music is absolutely fantastic! I have to admit, I was more excited for the soundtrack than the actual game, especially after hearing the music of Pillars 1 and Tyranny. I hope to hear your work in many games to come. Keep up the great work!

Well, it's an honor to serve, thank you for your kind words of encouragement!

[Multihog]

 

 

I like the white match combat music D:

 

I have to agree about deadfire's combat music being meh though. At least it wasn't offensive to the ear but it could've been much better.

As much as I like the non-combat music, I'll have to agree on this one.

 

The combat music sounds like it's a little bit subdued, afraid to go all out. To me, it seems like the idea was to have a sense of unity between the whole of the OST, so the combat music is kind of trying to stay in line with the non-combat music, which led it to having this neutral, almost relaxing vibe tonally. There's some darkness in combat #2, but that's about it.

 

Another thing about the combat music is that the lacks track any remarkable progression in terms of form. They're all based on some sort of rhythmic motive that they keep up near-continuously throughout the track without much change. They're also tonally quite static, repeating the same ostinati, bass patterns, and chord progressions throughout, sometimes melodies dropping in and out. All of this leads to a lack of sense of progression and tension/release. The tracks sort of feel like intros that never go anywhere.

Yes that was the intent, for better or worse. They're designed to fill the cracks of combat sound design and to be durable over 100 hours of potential gameplay. POE1 combat music was foreground music, PoE2 is decidedly background music.

 

Yep. I'm of the opinion that that was a bad choice and that more conspicuous and intense combat music would've surely benefited the game more. Then again, I've never understood the position that having more prominent combat music will somehow wear out faster. I've heard Final Fantasy 7 and 8's battle themes thousands of times, and I still enjoy them.

 

In any case, I'd rather have good, memorable music that I'll get sick of after 100 or 1000 hours than purposely colorless, dull, and repetitive music that I never enjoyed in the first place. To me, that's as good as silence because it doesn't affect me in any way. 

 

I'm sure many disagree, though.

 

Speaking of PoE 2 sound design, that's some of the best I've heard in an isometric RPG, if not the best. 

Edited May 17, 2018 by Multihog

[Elerond]

 

 

 

I’d like to use this opportunity to say that I absolutely love the music in Neketaka! It makes me feel so... relaxed. Perfect for a hub.

 

Especially the Queen’s Berth track. Thank you for that piece.

You are most welcome. Curious, how much time percentage wise are you spending in Neketaka?

Hmm. I'm rather slow when it comes to playing through games, and I'm still rather early into the game, so... I'd say it's been around half of the time logged on the save.

Interesting! I mean it makes sense, Neketaka has tons of content. I wonder if that's a common experience?

 

 

For me Neketaka took 30-40% of the 80 hours that it took for me to finish my first run.

 

Neketaka not only has lots of content by itself, but lots of side quest that you do in other places are tied to Neketaka, if not by quest giver then by some other thing that you need to do there in order to complete the quest.

[Skazz]

Then again, I've never understood the position that having more prominent combat music will somehow wear out faster. I've heard Final Fantasy 7 and 8's battle themes thousands of times, and I still enjoy them.

 

Myself, I can perfectly understand that position. On one hand, I can agree on the point of FFVIII. For all the game's faults, Don't Be Afraid is a great battle theme. On the other hand, FFVII's battle theme makes me want to claw out my ear drums whenever I'm exposed to it for extended periods of time - and that's despite my heavy nostalgia goggles.

 

To be fair, I'm not really an audio buff and I can't pinpoint the exact thing that wears me out in FFVII's theme. Perhaps it's just the inferior sound format/quality.

Edited May 17, 2018 by Skazz

[Multihog]

 

Then again, I've never understood the position that having more prominent combat music will somehow wear out faster. I've heard Final Fantasy 7 and 8's battle themes thousands of times, and I still enjoy them.

 

Well, myself, I can perfectly understand that point. On one hand, I can agree that on FFVIII. For all the game's faults, Don't Be Afraid is a great battle theme. On the other hand, FFVII's battle theme makes me want to claw out my ear drums whenever I'm exposed to it for extended periods of time - and that's despite my heavy nostalgia goggles.

 

To be fair, I'm not really a music buff and I can't pinpoint the exact thing that wears me out in FFVII's theme. Perhaps it's just the inferior sound format/quality.

 

Yeah, that's the problem with having just one combat theme If it's not to a person's liking, it'll end up being a much bigger irritant than having many themes, or even a single less prominent one. 

 

And yeah, I can understand the point as well. It makes some sense in theory, but I don't think it works like that in reality—especially if your game has 5 combat themes. 

Edited May 17, 2018 by Multihog

[Multihog]

 

I like the white match combat music D:

 

I have to agree about deadfire's combat music being meh though. At least it wasn't offensive to the ear but it could've been much better.

Understood and fair. I was trying to address criticism from the first game that combat music was too in your face, too repetitive, too attention grabbing. It's a process, maybe next game will strike the right balance.

 

I missed this comment before (also, I have no idea how to add a quote into an existing post with this interface, so excuse the double post.)

 

Really? That's interesting, and then it makes perfect sense that you went for the more background type of approach for PoE2. I didn't feel that way at all about PoE1's music. I think it was perfectly fine in terms of how attention-grabbing it was, not much different in that sense from something like Baldur's Gate. 

[Justin Bell]

 

 

 

I like the white match combat music D:

 

I have to agree about deadfire's combat music being meh though. At least it wasn't offensive to the ear but it could've been much better.

As much as I like the non-combat music, I'll have to agree on this one.

 

The combat music sounds like it's a little bit subdued, afraid to go all out. To me, it seems like the idea was to have a sense of unity between the whole of the OST, so the combat music is kind of trying to stay in line with the non-combat music, which led it to having this neutral, almost relaxing vibe tonally. There's some darkness in combat #2, but that's about it.

 

Another thing about the combat music is that the lacks track any remarkable progression in terms of form. They're all based on some sort of rhythmic motive that they keep up near-continuously throughout the track without much change. They're also tonally quite static, repeating the same ostinati, bass patterns, and chord progressions throughout, sometimes melodies dropping in and out. All of this leads to a lack of sense of progression and tension/release. The tracks sort of feel like intros that never go anywhere.

Yes that was the intent, for better or worse. They're designed to fill the cracks of combat sound design and to be durable over 100 hours of potential gameplay. POE1 combat music was foreground music, PoE2 is decidedly background music.

Yep. I'm of the opinion that that was a bad choice and that more conspicuous and intense combat music would've surely benefited the game more. Then again, I've never understood the position that having more prominent combat music will somehow wear out faster. I've heard Final Fantasy 7 and 8's battle themes thousands of times, and I still enjoy them.

 

In any case, I'd rather have good, memorable music that I'll get sick of after 100 or 1000 hours than purposely colorless, dull, and repetitive music that I never enjoyed in the first place. To me, that's as good as silence because it doesn't affect me in any way.

 

I'm sure many disagree, though.

 

Speaking of PoE 2 sound design, that's some of the best I've heard in an isometric RPG, if not the best.

Thank you! I'll pass this along to the sound team. They really out-did themselves. It was quite an intensive effort.

[Justin Bell]

 

Then again, I've never understood the position that having more prominent combat music will somehow wear out faster. I've heard Final Fantasy 7 and 8's battle themes thousands of times, and I still enjoy them.

Myself, I can perfectly understand that position. On one hand, I can agree on the point of FFVIII. For all the game's faults, Don't Be Afraid is a great battle theme. On the other hand, FFVII's battle theme makes me want to claw out my ear drums whenever I'm exposed to it for extended periods of time - and that's despite my heavy nostalgia goggles.

 

To be fair, I'm not really an audio buff and I can't pinpoint the exact thing that wears me out in FFVII's theme. Perhaps it's just the inferior sound format/quality.

Yes I think that was the impetus with Deadfire. I got a significant amount of community feedback about combat music from PoE1, many felt annoyed by its repetitive nature.

[Justin Bell]

 

 

I like the white match combat music D:

 

I have to agree about deadfire's combat music being meh though. At least it wasn't offensive to the ear but it could've been much better.

Understood and fair. I was trying to address criticism from the first game that combat music was too in your face, too repetitive, too attention grabbing. It's a process, maybe next game will strike the right balance.

I missed this comment before (also, I have no idea how to add a quote into an existing post with this interface, so excuse the double post.)

 

Really? That's interesting, and then it makes perfect sense that you went for the more background type of approach for PoE2. I didn't feel that way at all about PoE1's music. I think it was perfectly fine in terms of how attention-grabbing it was, not much different in that sense from something like Baldur's Gate.

I think there are two camps when it comes to POE1's music; those that like repetition and those that don't. Those that don't were very vocal after the first game was released, and I took that feedback to heart.

 

Another thing that you might be hearing is that the combat sfx will "duck" the combat music to a degree, masking it out in various ways. It's just a way to make things sound more coherent at the expense of clarity in the music

[Skazz]

Well, regardless of any differences in opinion we might have, I think we're all in the same boat (hue) when it comes to the awesomeness that is...

 

HEAVE-HO! AIM'SPIRENTE!

Edited May 17, 2018 by Skazz

[Multihog]

 

 

 

I like the white match combat music D:

 

I have to agree about deadfire's combat music being meh though. At least it wasn't offensive to the ear but it could've been much better.

Understood and fair. I was trying to address criticism from the first game that combat music was too in your face, too repetitive, too attention grabbing. It's a process, maybe next game will strike the right balance.

I missed this comment before (also, I have no idea how to add a quote into an existing post with this interface, so excuse the double post.)

 

Really? That's interesting, and then it makes perfect sense that you went for the more background type of approach for PoE2. I didn't feel that way at all about PoE1's music. I think it was perfectly fine in terms of how attention-grabbing it was, not much different in that sense from something like Baldur's Gate.

I think there are two camps when it comes to POE1's music; those that like repetition and those that don't. Those that don't were very vocal after the first game was released, and I took that feedback to heart.

 

Another thing that you might be hearing is that the combat sfx will "duck" the combat music to a degree, masking it out in various ways. It's just a way to make things sound more coherent at the expense of clarity in the music

 

Well, can't fault you for listening to feedback and adhering to it in next iterations. That's a good thing. 

 

Things like this are problematic because they're divisive: please one crowd, and you'll end up displeasing the other. Then another thing with feedback is that sometimes even the people who demanded change may not be satisfied with the alternative and may end up complaining anyway. People don't always even know what they want. 

[Justin Bell]

Well, regardless of any differences in opinion we might have, I think we're all in the same boat (hue) when it comes to the awesomeness that is...

 

HEAVE-HO! AIM'SPIRENTE!

Indeed!

 

Gotta say it was a lot of fun singing those songs. Nils is a real powerhouse of a singer, it was hard not to get caught up in the moment!

[Justin Bell]

 

 

 

 

I like the white match combat music D:

 

I have to agree about deadfire's combat music being meh though. At least it wasn't offensive to the ear but it could've been much better.

Understood and fair. I was trying to address criticism from the first game that combat music was too in your face, too repetitive, too attention grabbing. It's a process, maybe next game will strike the right balance.

I missed this comment before (also, I have no idea how to add a quote into an existing post with this interface, so excuse the double post.)

 

Really? That's interesting, and then it makes perfect sense that you went for the more background type of approach for PoE2. I didn't feel that way at all about PoE1's music. I think it was perfectly fine in terms of how attention-grabbing it was, not much different in that sense from something like Baldur's Gate.

I think there are two camps when it comes to POE1's music; those that like repetition and those that don't. Those that don't were very vocal after the first game was released, and I took that feedback to heart.

 

Another thing that you might be hearing is that the combat sfx will "duck" the combat music to a degree, masking it out in various ways. It's just a way to make things sound more coherent at the expense of clarity in the music

Well, can't fault you for listening to feedback and adhering to it in next iterations. That's a good thing.

 

Things like this are problematic because they're divisive: please one crowd, and you'll end up displeasing the other. Then another thing with feedback is that sometimes even the people who demanded change may not be satisfied with the alternative and may end up complaining anyway. People don't always even know what they want.

I appreciate that. It's a tricky balance for sure, all we can do is keep trying

[Srex]

 

I like the white match combat music D:

 

I have to agree about deadfire's combat music being meh though. At least it wasn't offensive to the ear but it could've been much better.

Understood and fair. I was trying to address criticism from the first game that combat music was too in your face, too repetitive, too attention grabbing. It's a process, maybe next game will strike the right balance.

 

 

I haven't gotten to play deadfire yet because I'm still replaying the first game, with, uh, two different parties. But one thing that's stood out to me recently in playing pillars 1 is how jarring it is to be running around listening to the lovely ondra's gift theme and then suddenly get blasted with the combat music, which is waaaaay louder than the walkabout music. I usually have to change the music volume slider during and after every combat to rebalance the sound. I like the music itself, it's just too loud relative to the rest of the tracks, so thank you for addressing that. I'm interested to hear how it all turned out once I hit the deadfire.

[Justin Bell]

 

 

I like the white match combat music D:

 

I have to agree about deadfire's combat music being meh though. At least it wasn't offensive to the ear but it could've been much better.

Understood and fair. I was trying to address criticism from the first game that combat music was too in your face, too repetitive, too attention grabbing. It's a process, maybe next game will strike the right balance.

I haven't gotten to play deadfire yet because I'm still replaying the first game, with, uh, two different parties. But one thing that's stood out to me recently in playing pillars 1 is how jarring it is to be running around listening to the lovely ondra's gift theme and then suddenly get blasted with the combat music, which is waaaaay louder than the walkabout music. I usually have to change the music volume slider during and after every combat to rebalance the sound. I like the music itself, it's just too loud relative to the rest of the tracks, so thank you for addressing that. I'm interested to hear how it all turned out once I hit the deadfire.

My apologies for you having to do that. I hope Deadfire is an improvement in this regard

[tela2k]

My apologies for you having to do that. I hope Deadfire is an improvement in this regard

 

 

 

Well overall I think Deadfire was a huge improvement in sound design. Sound effects, music and the full VO made me play with my better headphones on the whole way. Only thing really on my personal wishlist is a more bombastic main theme, because I'm just a total sucker for the TES: Oblivion or BG2: SoA themes. I mean you can't listen to them for very long, but they do get you pumped and ready to slay some kobolds.

[Justin Bell]

 

My apologies for you having to do that. I hope Deadfire is an improvement in this regard

 

 

 

Well overall I think Deadfire was a huge improvement in sound design. Sound effects, music and the full VO made me play with my better headphones on the whole way. Only thing really on my personal wishlist is a more bombastic main theme, because I'm just a total sucker for the TES: Oblivion or BG2: SoA themes. I mean you can't listen to them for very long, but they do get you pumped and ready to slay some kobolds.

Cool! Fair request for a more bombastic theme, many others have asked for this too. I'll keep at it

[Aotrs Commander]

 

 

I like the white match combat music D:

 

I have to agree about deadfire's combat music being meh though. At least it wasn't offensive to the ear but it could've been much better.

As much as I like the non-combat music, I'll have to agree on this one.

 

The combat music sounds like it's a little bit subdued, afraid to go all out. To me, it seems like the idea was to have a sense of unity between the whole of the OST, so the combat music is kind of trying to stay in line with the non-combat music, which led it to having this neutral, almost relaxing vibe tonally. There's some darkness in combat #2, but that's about it.

 

Another thing about the combat music is that the lacks track any remarkable progression in terms of form. They're all based on some sort of rhythmic motive that they keep up near-continuously throughout the track without much change. They're also tonally quite static, repeating the same ostinati, bass patterns, and chord progressions throughout, sometimes melodies dropping in and out. All of this leads to a lack of sense of progression and tension/release. The tracks sort of feel like intros that never go anywhere.

Yes that was the intent, for better or worse. They're designed to fill the cracks of combat sound design and to be durable over 100 hours of potential gameplay. POE1 combat music was foreground music, PoE2 is decidedly background music.

 

 

Well, from my (still limited, ain't got hear any shanties yet!) experience with the combat music, it completed it objective of being so much background that it completely bypassed my notice.

 

It is also, I think, an approach a lot of games seem to take (especially 4X starship games).

 

Now, whether that is necessarily really a good thing is a different question. Because while it achieves its objectives (i.e. not being very noticable in its absense), it also means that is pretty by definition not a good piece of music by itself. ('Cos it is, y'know, not designed to be, but to, as you sat, fill the gaps in the flashy explosions.)

 

I think the other problem stuff like PoE has is that, unlike, say X-Com 2 (a soundtrack I very much listened to outside of the game!), you need to split your music-people-time among more things that are not fight music (like, y'know, all the ambient music).

 

JRPGs seem to mange this well a fair bit of the time (Final Fantasy especially...)

 

But, that said, their raises an interesting point that in FF (in the old ones that had good soundtracks, anyway), there was notably only one thing going on at a time. (Actually... Ditto X-Com and ditto Pokémon - though not C&C or TIE Fighter). Which begs a question that is the fact the music is more foreground-y because it has to compete with much less?

 

 

 

Question is, then, has anyone ever (in like the dev team where you could do it internally), say, tried running a combat while running a track from I dunno, let's go with Don't Be Afraid (as someone mentioned, the music was the best part of FFVIII), but [whatever]? Just to see what it sounds like? (I 'spose anyone could do it, if you turned the music off and played it from a tablet or laptop or something!) I'm a 3D print CAD jockey, not a music person, so I lack the professional nouse to be able to make a useful judgement[1], but it'd be an interesting thing to hear about the results of.

 

 

 

[1]And as a person whose musical tastes run almost exclusively to Soundtracks From Things With An Emphasis On The Fight Music, I'm probably not the best authority, since I probably WOULD think PoE2 combat to The Touch or the Pokémon Anime Kanto Gym Theme or something would be ridiculously cool, even if sane people wouldn't...!

[Yosharian]

I'm a simple man.  I see a Justin Bell post, I hit the like button.

 

Except for the part where you said you like Witcher 3.

[Multihog]

Honestly, I don't consider it a very legitimate concern that having prominent music with more interest will block out other sounds or demand too much attention, especially during a pitched battle. The brain is pretty good at focusing on what's relevant and juggling between different things. As I see it, it's more of a case of balancing the volume levels between the music and other sounds rather than it being necessary to "dumb down" the music so that it doesn't fight for attention. 

 

In my subjective experience, the "background" type of music has never added much to my experience. Rather, my brain completely ignores it and it almost ceases to exist. It becomes pure background noise without any emotional effect and thus all but useless as it doesn't really enhance the scene. It's only there to fill a void of silence. But when there's a good foreground piece with melodic/harmonic/rhythmic interest, it clearly adds to the experience for me. Why is this the most popular piece in Dark Souls?

That's because it stands on its own as a good piece, inside the game or outside the game. It has interest, and it makes the battle epic as hell. It's memorable and effective. 

 

Another question is: is it really worth it to sacrifice music just so that some clanks of metal and characters' grunts can have full attention and clarity at all times (assuming more conspicuous music has such a greatly distracting effect in the first place, which I don't think it does)? 

As far as I'm concerned, the answer is no.

Edited May 17, 2018 by Multihog

[Justin Bell]

Honestly, I don't consider it a very legitimate concern that having prominent music with more interest will block out other sounds or demand too much attention, especially during a pitched battle. The brain is pretty good at focusing on what's relevant and juggling between different things. As I see it, it's more of a case of balancing the volume levels between the music and other sounds rather than it being necessary to "dumb down" the music so that it doesn't fight for attention.

 

In my subjective experience, the "background" type of music has never added much to my experience. Rather, my brain completely ignores it and it almost ceases to exist. It becomes pure background noise without any emotional effect and thus all but useless as it doesn't really enhance the scene. It's only there to fill a void of silence. But when there's a good foreground piece with melodic/harmonic/rhythmic interest, it clearly adds to the experience for me. Why is this the most popular piece in Dark Souls? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgpYfCnLhAo

That's because it stands on its own as a good piece, inside the game or outside the game. It has interest, and it makes the battle epic as hell. It's memorable and effective.

 

Another question is: is it really worth it to sacrifice music just so that some clanks of metal and characters' grunts can have full attention and clarity at all times (assuming more conspicuous music has such a greatly distracting effect in the first place, which I don't think it does)?

As far as I'm concerned, the answer is no.

All fair points. Blending in was not the only objective. I should also add that I wanted to experiment with the percussion section as a soloist, hence the reason why melody has taken a back seat in many of the cues. You don't see a lot of percussion only action music - it's typically accompanied by strings, brass, choir/vocals, synths, guitar etc - and I wanted to appreciate the purity of percussion on it's own because I think it can be very powerful.

 

We hired an amazing percussionist to perform for the soundtrack!

[Justin Bell]

 

 

 

I like the white match combat music D:

 

I have to agree about deadfire's combat music being meh though. At least it wasn't offensive to the ear but it could've been much better.

As much as I like the non-combat music, I'll have to agree on this one.

 

The combat music sounds like it's a little bit subdued, afraid to go all out. To me, it seems like the idea was to have a sense of unity between the whole of the OST, so the combat music is kind of trying to stay in line with the non-combat music, which led it to having this neutral, almost relaxing vibe tonally. There's some darkness in combat #2, but that's about it.

 

Another thing about the combat music is that the lacks track any remarkable progression in terms of form. They're all based on some sort of rhythmic motive that they keep up near-continuously throughout the track without much change. They're also tonally quite static, repeating the same ostinati, bass patterns, and chord progressions throughout, sometimes melodies dropping in and out. All of this leads to a lack of sense of progression and tension/release. The tracks sort of feel like intros that never go anywhere.

Yes that was the intent, for better or worse. They're designed to fill the cracks of combat sound design and to be durable over 100 hours of potential gameplay. POE1 combat music was foreground music, PoE2 is decidedly background music.

Well, from my (still limited, ain't got hear any shanties yet!) experience with the combat music, it completed it objective of being so much background that it completely bypassed my notice.

 

It is also, I think, an approach a lot of games seem to take (especially 4X starship games).

 

Now, whether that is necessarily really a good thing is a different question. Because while it achieves its objectives (i.e. not being very noticable in its absense), it also means that is pretty by definition not a good piece of music by itself. ('Cos it is, y'know, not designed to be, but to, as you sat, fill the gaps in the flashy explosions.)

 

I think the other problem stuff like PoE has is that, unlike, say X-Com 2 (a soundtrack I very much listened to outside of the game!), you need to split your music-people-time among more things that are not fight music (like, y'know, all the ambient music).

 

JRPGs seem to mange this well a fair bit of the time (Final Fantasy especially...)

 

But, that said, their raises an interesting point that in FF (in the old ones that had good soundtracks, anyway), there was notably only one thing going on at a time. (Actually... Ditto X-Com and ditto Pokémon - though not C&C or TIE Fighter). Which begs a question that is the fact the music is more foreground-y because it has to compete with much less?

 

 

 

Question is, then, has anyone ever (in like the dev team where you could do it internally), say, tried running a combat while running a track from I dunno, let's go with Don't Be Afraid (as someone mentioned, the music was the best part of FFVIII), but [whatever]? Just to see what it sounds like? (I 'spose anyone could do it, if you turned the music off and played it from a tablet or laptop or something!) I'm a 3D print CAD jockey, not a music person, so I lack the professional nouse to be able to make a useful judgement[1], but it'd be an interesting thing to hear about the results of.

 

 

 

[1]And as a person whose musical tastes run almost exclusively to Soundtracks From Things With An Emphasis On The Fight Music, I'm probably not the best authority, since I probably WOULD think PoE2 combat to The Touch or the Pokémon Anime Kanto Gym Theme or something would be ridiculously cool, even if sane people wouldn't...!

Fair enough You make a lot of very good points. By the next game I expect I'll have dialed in just the right balance in combat music. We shall see!