General Video Game Thread

[Runescryer]

Maximum Mike himself comes to the defense of CP2077 and CDPR...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7Kw_rErZiU

[Atomic]

@Sparks said in General Video Game Thread:

@Atomic said in General Video Game Thread:

No video game I've ever encountered that I can think of has come close to achieving what FF6 did with character themes/leitmotifs. There are some wonderful, notable video game soundtracks, no question. But what FF6 pulled off is in a class of its own.

Have you played any of Supergiant's games? Bastion, Transistor, Pyre? Their musical direction and use of mood and character themes, up to and including re-recording a song for characters undergoing trauma, has impressed me a great deal.

That's true, Bastion is pretty damn close to that level, and Transistor moreso. I haven't played Pyre to judge.

Pyre.. as much of a musical leap as Transistor was over Bastion, Pyre is over Transistor.

[Warma Sheen]

Been playing Orbus VR Reborn on the Oculus Quest. It is fantastic fun. A full MMO experience in VR. 8 classes and you can play them all on the same character. Dungeons, groups, raids, all the stuffs. I didn't think they were this far along with VR but it plays great. Its like living Everquest.

Also, you can invest a lot of time into it with new material unlike most of the other VR games out right now which only have a few hours of content, if that.

[Testament]

@Sparks said in General Video Game Thread:

@egg said in General Video Game Thread:

I am incredibly excited about the FF7 remake, despite all of the sour grapes FFVI fanboys and girls who come out of the woodwork every time a new thing related to FF7 comes along...something something opera...something something Kefka...you know, FF7 has musical themes for every playable character, too.

waves FF6 banner anyway, albeit sullenly

Look, I'm just saying we've had a pre-smartphone phone game, a PSP game, the original PS game, two movies, a PS2 game, a smartphone game, AND now a remake of the original game. I'm a little Shinra'd-out, and I'm feeling the urge for some Magitek.

(Also, FF6 has better music, no matter how much a whoooole bunch of people want to say that One-Winged Angel is the definitive FF song. Terra's Theme is better, fight me.)

Shadow's Theme is better.

I will fite you over it.

[Sparks]

@Testament said in General Video Game Thread:

@Sparks said in General Video Game Thread:

@egg said in General Video Game Thread:

I am incredibly excited about the FF7 remake, despite all of the sour grapes FFVI fanboys and girls who come out of the woodwork every time a new thing related to FF7 comes along...something something opera...something something Kefka...you know, FF7 has musical themes for every playable character, too.

waves FF6 banner anyway, albeit sullenly

Look, I'm just saying we've had a pre-smartphone phone game, a PSP game, the original PS game, two movies, a PS2 game, a smartphone game, AND now a remake of the original game. I'm a little Shinra'd-out, and I'm feeling the urge for some Magitek.

(Also, FF6 has better music, no matter how much a whoooole bunch of people want to say that One-Winged Angel is the definitive FF song. Terra's Theme is better, fight me.)

Shadow's Theme is better.

I will fite you over it.

I will grant it a very, very close second, and accept that someone else might (erroneously) rank it higher.

And Marc Papeghin's cover of it is pretty amazing. But Terra's Theme will always remain, in my heart, the music I associate most strongly with FF6.

Actually, I'm trying to think of any modern game soundtracks (for 'modern' let's go with in the past ten years) that I think of as being as iconic as the games of that era. Not just ones that you can recognize when you hear them—there's plenty that reach that level—but ones where you can hum them without prompting, without listening to them first?

I feel like Nate's Theme (in all its variations) from the first three Uncharted games is, in its own way, as memorable as the Indiana Jones theme; that one sticks with you once you've heard it, and it's easy to remember.

And of course, there's the Dovahkiin Song from Skyrim, which I think everyone on the internet knows. Whether or not they played that game. Or any video game. Ever. (FUS! RO! DAH!)

There's bits of the soundtracks from my beloved Mass Effect trilogy that might achieve that level; ME3's main theme, Leaving Earth, probably foremost among them.

Maybe Aloy's Theme from Horizon Zero Dawn? We're at edge cases now, though; I really like this one, but I don't know how many people who played HZD could still hum this one now, two years after the game's release, without listening to the track first.

But how many classic games are there where the themes are ones you could hum immediately without prompting? Super Mario Brothers, the main theme to Zelda (and the Epona song!), the main theme to the Pokemon franchise, Tetris, the soundtracks to the early Final Fantasy games, Chrono Trigger, etc... I'm not sure if it's just because they were, in many cases, games during our formative years, or if it's just that in making the soundtrack for primitive sound hardware, they had to boil a song down to its basics and make those really matter.

[Selira]

Uematsu and Mitsuda drew heavily from classical, romantic and baroque techniques in writing their music, and brought a minimalist feel to it. Those who liked their work - particularly on the SNES - might find themselves fans of Ludovico Einaudi's piano work. There is something about intentional musical minimalism that is stirring, and when they moved on to CD formats and more complicated music, some of that charm faded quite quickly (though Mitsuda's work in Xenosaga is still gorgeous - the Gnosis theme was one I played on repeat a lot in my teen years).

Those were also the days when OCRemix and VGTunes (I think that was the name, but it has been so long) were a force in fandom. Things like Terra in Black were what actually got me into metal, and you can hear the minimalism and romantic influences clearly in this cover. It's very simplistic - but it's very good.

Other honorable mentions are the main and battle themes from FFIV, Cyan's theme... I think I'm going on a nostalgia run tonight.

[Too Old For This]

@Sparks Simple and Clean Kingdom's Heart. The second I hear this song, I think of the game, and vice versa. Have since the very first game, and its carried through every single sequel they've made.

[Jaded]

@Sparks
The primary theme from The Last of Us really sticks with me and I can pick up humming it at times when I'm writing stuff for my tabletop game.

[Ghost]

Fuck allayall.

Duck Tales NES music > FF6 music

[Ganymede]

@Ghost said in General Video Game Thread:

Duck Tales NES music > FF6 music

I like The Advantage's covers just as much as anyone else, but you're completely off.

[Ghost]

@Ganymede said in General Video Game Thread:

@Ghost said in General Video Game Thread:

Duck Tales NES music > FF6 music

I like The Advantage's covers just as much as anyone else, but you're completely off.

Oh I know, I'm just being a dork

[Tempest]

I'm sure a lot of people here are going to balk at the idea, but I kinda sorta got into Destiny 2 for like 3 months earlier this year (got bored with it, as is standard for me with MMOs), and I felt like as a game, it had one of the best soundtracks I've experienced in a long while.

'Journey' and its accompaniment of one of the first story missions is one of the most perfect bits of story/music/gameplay I've ever had the pleasure of playing through.

Just the music.

Actual HUD-less playthrough of the story mission. Skipped the first 2 minutes or so to get closer to when the music starts.

[Tempest]

Double post, the hype for FF7 is definitely real now. I was so worried when I saw a month or two back that it was labelled as an "action RPG". Worries averted, for now.

I know they are going to do something dumb somewhere though. They're going to try to add new party members or Aeris isn't going to die, or something.

These media companies can never seem to leave well enough alone when they're rehashing an old property.

Please don't fuck up Red XIII and Yuffie.

[Ghost]

@Tempest said in General Video Game Thread:

Please don't fuck up Red XIII

If they fuck up Red XIII, you will have my axe.

I will join you on this quest to Japan to fuck a brother up. I would literally swear fealty to Red.

[egg]

@Admiral I suggest playing it in Japanese to help with that...though yeah, it sucks and I don't give Squenix any passes for it.

[egg]

@Ghost Real fans call him Nanaki.

[Ghost]

@egg said in General Video Game Thread:

@Ghost Real fans call him Nanaki.

ohhhhhhhhmotherfuckerdidyoujust???

lol

[egg]

@Tempest Oh yeah, they'll probably do something dumb...but that gameplay demo got me legit excited. So far, they seem to be fucking it up less than I thought they might.

[egg]

@Sparks I personally think FF7 is more popular than FF6 for a reason, and only has a little bit to do with "advanced" graphics or whatever: FF7 is more unique, especially setting-wise and tonally, and especially for the time, in the JRPG arena than FF6. It's that uniqueness that brought non-JRPG fans into the fold.

Sure, FF6 might have better characters, a better story, even better gasp music (I don't believe any of these things are true, btw, but it's what FF6 fans always say!) -- but I don't think it puts these things together in a way that can draw 20+ years of fervor, and it probably never will.

"Terra's Theme" is great, though. I'll give you that. (My fave FF7 track is probably "Anxious Heart.")

[egg]

@Ghost