Developers willing to imitate the style of Hollywood blockbusters in their video game soundtracks are halting the progress of video game music, says Final Fantasy's composer, one of the greatest of all time. , Nobuo Uematsu said.
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Uematsu has written some of the most iconic works of all time, including Final Fantasy VII's One-Winged Angel, Final Fantasy VIII's Liberi Fatari, and Final Fantasy X's To Zanarkand. told the Japanese outlet. NewsPicks (translated by Automaton) stated that the industry is “complacent with movie soundtrack-like music in games” and that it risks reaching a point where “game music can't develop any further.”
Veteran composers have found that the rudimentary memory limitations of the NES and SNES (the latter was limited to eight sounds at a time) and even CD-ROM load times on games have changed the course of their careers. We looked back at how hardware limitations spurred creativity in the early days. The original PlayStation influenced his approach to composing tracks using compressed samples to avoid long loading times, such as when encountering random battles.
By comparison, the expanded capabilities of the PlayStation 2 and beyond ushered in an era of “almost anything you want,” which led Uematsu to experiment with genres ranging from rock to jazz. This can be heard in FFX's heavy metal masterpiece “Otherworld.”
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Uematsu hinted that this freedom and desire to experiment is what has led to music's stagnation, emphasizing that “people need to be more free when creating.” ” and try to create something new.
“Game music becomes more interesting when composers think, 'What is something that only I can do?'” Then, they use their knowledge and experience to become truly creative. ”
Naturally, composers don't think using AI to spew out soulless crap (as AI does) is the answer. To create music that connects with players, he says, “you have to reach deep within yourself and find the unique side of yourself” that speaks to you and expresses it. ” After all, he is Nobuo Uematsu, so he would know.
As an example of what great original human-made music can accomplish, Uematsu says, “music acts as oxygen,” bringing emotional weight and capturing the immersion and atmosphere of such a world. It pointed to the era of 8-bit games. The first Final Fantasy where visuals and voice acting were severely limited or impossible by the hardware.
He has been responsible for the music for every Final Fantasy game, from his 1987 debut (his now iconic music was initially rejected by series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi) to Final Fantasy X, and has since created music for the rest of the series. He continues to contribute to the theme. , Uematsu recently suggested that he doesn't have the “stamina” to score an entire video game again and would instead focus on other projects. His last full video game soundtrack was Sakaguchi's mobile-only (for the time being) RPG Fantasian, but he recently wrote the theme song for this year's Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, “No Promises to Keep.”
