Let's talk music - Dawntrail really drops the ball reusing old themes

The laziest one for me was the re-use of the Garlemald Tertium music which was supposed to give that bleak 1940s "war time radio" vibe and felt so out of place when they used it.

The music sounds like a huge mess and out of place at times too. Freeform jazz works. Freeform anything does not.
Also the old tracks references to prior games is to trigger the chips in the brains of nostalgia slaves for dopamine.

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Originally Posted by caffe_macchiato

Did Square Enix run out of budget with this expansion? It's a serious question that we have to start asking, since Square Enix apparently had a 70% decline in profits in 2023. We know the company isn't doing well and it doesn't have the money to hire good script writers or voice actors. But I was shocked to see ARR music being the #1 source of filler music in cutscenes. Prior expansions were not this bad. Naturally, nothing will change because this is Square Enix and the company's probably headed for a liquidation soon.

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I felt this way the whole expansion. It was like the budget was gutted from everywhere except visuals.

They reuse that one 'happy' Tulliyolal cutscene music like, all the time. It really feels like they only made one new song for cutscenes in that region and it got old near the end of the expansion. I expect there to be more variety but it was either machinations or that one song.

That being said I think the Boss Theme and Mid-Boss Themes are the best in the game so far and I'm a huge fan of 'em.

I don't think people really appreciate how much incidental music was written for 1.0 and how little of it Soken has been writing from 2.0 onwards.

Sometimes we get things like ShB or EW level 78/88 quests that just repeat the one semi-exciting theme he wrote for like 2 hours of running around talking to npcs until the plot moves along. I think this happens partially because they feel compelled to use the new music, but this problem is also a musical direction one, as they sometimes choose pieces that don't really fit the gameplay (or lack thereof) for extended periods. Overusing pieces we know and love or ones we haven't heard much yet poorly weakens their effect, and I think that's a more significant part of the problem that might not be easy to notice at first.

Using the leitmotifs too often dilutes them; I was sick of StB's theme because of how often it showed up, from the main battle theme to the boss theme to Shinryu's theme to Rhalgr's Reach to Kugane, and likewise the mid-boss theme for ShB, which was added in 5.2, retroactively changing every boss theme in dungeons before that also made the endboss theme Insatiable way weaker because it employed the same melody.

Soken's managed to do better with that particular issue in EW and DT dungeons I think, but there's still so, so many places that could just, I dunno, use another random piece you haven't heard since ARR hard mode dungeon bosses to keep the variety going. It doesn't help when they play a piece for like 5 seconds before changing to a different one in a cutscene, either.

I also think that sometimes writing wholly new melodies is a lot tougher than just remixing ones as evidenced by a zone's day/night themes and a dungeon variant (or two, in some cases), and extending this to more than just zones or main expansion themes would be good. The old Feast theme was just the fate boss theme remixed; the duel theme is just HW's battle theme remixed; Onsal Hakair is just the ARR level 28+ dungeon battle theme remixed. Why stop at battle theme remixes and not remix some of those old tried and true incidental pieces, like 'the happy one' or 'the silly one'? I love Dreams Aloft, personally (written by Ryo Yamazaki), though that's mostly been relegated to being just "Cid's theme".

So this isn't a new issue. Like, Soken wrote that one sorta jazzy sorta silly theme with the finger snaps and electric organ in EW and it got used. So. Many. Times. From the RPR starting to Scions being aethersick to Zero liking spicy food and it just ruins the piece.

My point is I think reusing old pieces is a good thing because the amount of music Soken has to put out each expansion has never included incidental tracks which are so commonly used for cutscenes. Or, at least an acceptable thing compared to the alternative of just using the same new tracks over and over if they're not willing to have additional composers writing and scoring full time.

They should set it up so that an expansion's FATEs use its battle theme. Not only would it give variety, but I'm also guessing that most people have combat music disabled, so they probably don't hear those songs outside of trailers or soundtrack uploads.

I agree. The reuse of tracks like Fracture, Damnation, Forever Lost, Return of the Hero, Bliss, and a few others without at least a regional flare/rearrangement to them is really starting to grate on me...

I feel the jazz theme in the city is out of place, but I also really like it. It has this 1980s, sitting in a beach house in Miami vibe.

They really need to diversify their team. I don't think it's healthy for the same people to work on every expansion when some things are clearly out of their area of expertise. You wouldn't ask a master baker to cook up a steak. This is the perfect time to give new composers the spotlight, especially ones who are more familiar with the style of music originating in the places this expac is based off of.

It had me wondering how many times we heard that one comedy music accross all the expacs, and then while playing one of the side quests, there is suddenly this entirely different one and was like "why didn't they use this one?"