you will never get away from the sound

Hey guys my band just uploaded our cover of starry eyed, so check it out if you want! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIQF_Bwb29U Subscribe to us if you enjoyed as we’ll be posting more music soon :D

It is no surprise to many people who really get to know me that music can be a make or break point of a game for me.  I’ll put it this way - If I have to mute a game to play it, I just won’t play.  For me, the music is an integral part of why a game is so enjoyable.  In thinking about the games I play that I just want to lose myself in, they all have in common the fact that they have some REALLY fantastic tunes going on (Seriously, play the phoenix wright games and tell me there isn’t some SUPURB instrumentation there)

Then I came to some games where a lot of the music I hear… it doesn’t filter into my mind so much - at least not as much as music normally does.  That is where I go WTF, that is so far off of my MO for enjoyable gaming and… I like it?

The thing is… Unobtrusiveness is just as much a tool as something that is blatant, and I didn’t really realize it until I started playing the Etrian Odyssey games.

I know, I know, this is the point someone interrupts me and says WTF are you talking about, those games have awesome music.  And they do.  It’s something I’d noticed about the dungeon music, however.  Almost universally (At least what I’ve heard from the soundtracks, I’m not SUPER FAR in any of them yet), the dungeon music is incredibly calming, and soothing.  I’ve not yet encountered a super intense dungeon theme… and for these games?  That works.

For those who don’t know what Etrian Odyssey is, it’s a series of dungeon crawlers.  Because of that, well, you’re going to be spending a LOT of time hearing the dungeon music.  More specifically, you’ll spend a lot of time hearing the BEGINNING of the dungeon music.  Secondly, the games are very hard, so when you are getting pumped by the battle music, it’s actually rather nice that it drops you back into the soothingness after the battle is over.

Even those aren’t the reasons I really think it works - I think it works so much because the locations are SO very beautiful.  You are in this beautiful location with soothing music… and on the other hand, this same location is INCREDIBLY dangerous.  It creates a nice bit of cognitive dissonance  and that is why it works.  Music doesn’t HAVE to be in your face to serve well.  Sometimes, the type of music that is a soft underlier is just as good.