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Games OST nowadays sucks

M1chl

M1chl

Banned
Nov 20, 2017
2,054
Czech Republic
I am not bashing anyone who doing music, I simply just voicing my opinion, that lot of game OST lost "soul", if that make sense. Hw many themes or game scores you can hum or sign, almost none would be my humble guess.

I don't want to brag, since I worked hard to do this, I am ghost producer for a lot of trance and DnB artist, where melody is a king. And make a melody which stick in your head, it's extremely hard, even simple ones. Think about like this, it's really hard to do a logo for company or site, to be easily remembered. I think ERA and the site which-should-not-be-name did an excellent job. Simple, yet effective and rememberable.

What actually I miss in a lot of OSTs nowadays is melody, something to remember. Most of the time it's overdone layered something which sounds good, but when it stops playing do you remember it?

I will want to hear your opinion on this and I have some list of games I played which had great OST:

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (Have I need to say more? One of the best OST in games ever)
Dust: The Elysian Tail
Hotline Miami 1 and 2
Mass Effect 1
Uncharted....well mainly the Nate Theme, but 3rd has a great OST.
Halo, pretty much every single one, but Unforgotten is a masterpiece (I don't Halo besides Reach, ODST at all, but Marty).
Fury
Forza Horizon (pretty much all of them)
Life is Strange
Life is Strange: Before the Storm
Fallout: New Vegas
Ori and the Blind Forest and that trailer of Ori and Will of the Wisps (I guess every person named Gareth in UK is good producer)
Deus Ex: Human revolution
Red Dead Redemption


Sorry for coward escape, but I have been down mixing and mastering one track for 8 hours, I need to get some sleep, but I would like you to let me know what other games has OSTs with melody which is worth the fuck.
 
daybreak

daybreak

Member
Feb 28, 2018
2,415
"Game OSTs suck nowadays"

Lists a bunch of games from the last decade.

Also, I think you'll find the common answer is that OSTs are better now than ever. DOOM, Cuphead, Nier, Octopath, BotW, Odyssey, God of War all had incredible OSTs, just to name a few.

For a melody line, look to Odyssey's "Jump Up Superstar" which was pretty high up on the Billboard charts last year.
 

Deleted member 249

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
28,828
Some games with great soundtracks in the last year only:
  • Nier Automata
  • Persona 5
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 2
  • Super Mario Odyssey
  • God of War
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
  • Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia
  • Octopath Traveler
There's a lot of great games with great music. I disagree with your assessment.
 
goldenpp73

goldenpp73

Banned
Dec 5, 2017
2,144
I don't think they suck but they often do come off as striving for the same movie like tone which is boring. Plenty of good still though.
 
Smash-It Stan

Smash-It Stan

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,286
Most of the big AAA games have very forgettable boring OSTs. God of War being the latest one, can't remember a thing from that game. Been that way since early days of last gen.
 

Deleted member 34714

User requested account closure
Banned
Nov 28, 2017
1,617
You are right in that not many games do this, and I wish they did but reality kicks in and budget restricts this but yeah Nier is a good example of an OST done right. They didn't just do one sample, each song were mixed in different ways to match the game.
 
TheBaldwin

TheBaldwin

Member
Feb 25, 2018
8,300
Its just that soundtracks in games are done differently

In most older games, you'd have a single track in say a dungeon, and that track would repeat ad nauseum and would be a simple, but catchy melody, thus you'd remember it.

Tracks now, espcially in AAA, build up and add layers depending on what you are doing, and are alot more varied and have subtlety that adds to a scene or area.

God of war does this, and monster hunter world does this well too.

Been hearing great things about octopath traveller.
 
hydruxo

hydruxo

▲ Legend ▲
Member
Oct 25, 2017
20,469
There's been a couple threads like this recently and I think you're just playing the wrong games honestly. There are many games that I've played within the last two years alone that I'd say have fantastic scores.

These are some of my favorites lately off the top of my head:
- Hyper Light Drifter
- Detroit Become Human
- Pyre
- God of War
- Persona 5
- Horizon: Zero Dawn
- DOOM
- Abzu
- Destiny 2
- Nier Automata
 
doublechocochip

doublechocochip

Member
Nov 7, 2017
2,603
Might have to do the fact that most games don't use chiptunes anymore. Big budget games use orchestral tracks or licensed music nowadays.
 
Zoph

Zoph

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,516
I have a soft spot for the 32-bit era OSTs but on average game music has never been better than today.
 
Shan

Shan

Member
Oct 27, 2017
7,971
I wouldn't say they suck, because... -sees all the good examples here- yeah.
That said, i'll admit the vast majority of them doesn't stick with me, especially OSTs in some of the big budget games where most songs to me are generic orchestral songs #4503.
 
bunkitz

bunkitz

Brave Little Spark
Moderator
Oct 28, 2017
13,531
I mean, we had Persona 5 and NieR:Automata last year, so... no. Disagree. God of War was a tiny bit disappointing in that I expected it to be ridiculously good, but it was still great. Lullaby of the Giants and Deliverance, especially.
 
lvl 99 Pixel

lvl 99 Pixel

Member
Oct 25, 2017
44,764
Music didn't get worse, production values got higher for some and theres no shortage of electronic chiptunes style soundtracks either.

Smash-It Stan said:
Most of the big AAA games have very forgettable boring OSTs. God of War being the latest one, can't remember a thing from that game. Been that way since early days of last gen.
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Being catchy isnt what defines a good videogame composition, particularly when its used to set a tone. The ambience in Playdeads Inside for example, I cant really remember tunes specifically, but the sound design was still phenomenal.

M1chl said:
I would like you to let me know what other games has OSTs with melody which is worth the fuck.
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are you asking for music to make love to?
 
Jintor

Jintor

Saw the truth behind the copied door
Member
Oct 25, 2017
32,494
in like the last 2 years

splatoon 2
xenoblade 2
nier: a
danganronpa v3
persona 5
 
Kapryov

Kapryov

"This guy are sick"
Member
Oct 27, 2017
10,152
Australia
Last year had Nier Automata, Persona 5, as well as the super underrated soundtrack of Gravity Rush 2. That's without mentioning the various other excellent examples in this thread.

Try looking into Japanese games, they often have a higher focus on melody.
 
ChrisD

ChrisD

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,617
I've found myself humming a ton of Xenoblade 2 field themes. They made those with magic, I swear. Like Mario Overworld, it sticks with you but somehow takes a LOT of listening to get old.
 
DecoReturns

DecoReturns

Member
Oct 27, 2017
22,003
Fire Emblem Echoes (Don't sleep on this one, I felt it was the best of 2017, and in a year of tough competition)
Fire Emblem Fates
Xenoblade 2
Link Between Worlds
Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze
Octopath Traveler
Mario 3D World
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (Listen to Big Blue!)

(Seems your list lacked a bit of Nintendo music, so mostly listed stuff by them).
 

Deleted member 679

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
14,741
I'm probably one of the most annoying Persona 5 haters on Era, but yeah, I have to agree with all of the mentions it's getting here.

I keep coming back to this one:



So good. This particular song is the single most important part of Persona 5's atmosphere, in my opinion.

bunkitz said:
Oh, there's also Hollow Knight. Outstanding soundtrack.
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HGGGN

 
PacoChan

PacoChan

Member
Oct 28, 2017
71
I get what OP is trying to say. It is more common nowadays that games have those cinematic OSTs, with generic orchestral music that only enables in action scenes and then goes completely quiet when there's no action. Then there's traditional game music, with catchy looping themes that accompany a certain town, cave, dungeon or scene.

OP is of course generalizing. Of course there are a lot of games with great music like Persona, Nier, etc. But it's also true that this trend of cinematic orchestral scores is more common now. Japanese and indie games are usually the ones that still follow the "old" ways of doing music the most. I remember Grant Kirkhope (composer of Banjo, Perfect Dark, Yooka-Laylee) tweeting about this some time ago. He wasn't fan of this cinematic music trend and defended having melodic and looping catchy tunes for games.
 
RyougaSaotome

RyougaSaotome

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,684
I came in here with a list and a bone to pick, but you guys got it covered, looks like.

We could obviously go back past last year (a year of insane quality), but it says a lot that most of us can come up with very recent examples without having to look too far back.
 
Tora

Tora

The Enlightened Wise Ones
Member
Jun 17, 2018
8,641
I don't agree at all, there's so much variety that nothing has really come off as homogeneous for me.

I'll list a different game and that's Captain Toad which has a godlike main theme; super catchy.
 
lvl 99 Pixel

lvl 99 Pixel

Member
Oct 25, 2017
44,764
PacoChan said:
I get what OP is trying to say. It is more common nowadays that games have those cinematic OSTs, with generic orchestral music that only enables in action scenes and then goes completely quiet when there's no action. Then there's traditional game music, with catchy looping themes that accompany a certain town, cave, dungeon or scene.

OP is of course generalizing. Of course there are a lot of games with great music like Persona, Nier, etc. But it's also true that this trend of cinematic orchestral scores is more common now. Japanese and indie games are usually the ones that still follow the "old" ways of doing music the most. I remember Grant Kirkhope (composer of Banjo, Perfect Dark, Yooka-Laylee) tweeting about this some time ago. He wasn't fan of this cinematic music trend and defended having melodic and looping catchy tunes for games.
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Which games have generic orchestral music, and what makes them generic? Of course that style wouldn't work for the types of games Grant Kirkhope generally works on.
 
Joltik

Joltik

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,764
Oh, I have an excuse to post a couple of my fave overworld themes this gen!





I just want to know what else did the OP play other than the games on their list to come up with the conclusion that video game OSTs sucks nowadays. It's baffling, to say the least.
 
Gunny T Highway

Gunny T Highway

Unshakable Resolve - One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 27, 2017
17,054
Canada
Most of the games I would of listed have already been mentioned. I think this current Gen's OST's are up there with the greats in gaming soundtracks.
 
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