Quote Originally Posted by Iscah View Post
Also, something I have only recently picked up on but realise more and more as I'm aware of it...

Most, if not all, of the game's music has the same tune.

Obviously it varies. Songs are distinct enough that you can say "that's the music from X" or "they mixed Eternal Wind into the Shadowbringers theme" but (unless I am very mistaken and hearing things) the core sequence of notes is the same; it's just a matter of what they do with them.

As far as I can tell, this isn't an FFXIV thing but an FF thing - I played through FF3 recently and it's still the same core tune. So are the orchestrion rolls we have of FFVIII and FFXV. If the Ivalice raid music is from those games, it's there too.

It's a realisation that pulls a few things together - why Shadowbringers has two themes that blur together and I can't decide if the Crystarium day theme is based on 'Shadowbringers' or 'Tomorrow and Tomorrow'. Why Ravana's theme uses "the Mor Dhona field music". Why Toto-Rak's theme reappears in the Lv50 dungeons. How I recognised Sastasha's theme in Anamnesis and my FC mate said they didn't realise and thought it was just the Shadowbringers theme remixed... which set me to recognising that music in original Sastasha and then everywhere.

Obviously at points the similarity between two songs is enough that you notice that one resembles the other. The rest of the time there's enough variety that you don't notice until you look for it and suddenly it's everywhere.
Yeah, I'm not sure if you've heard the term (it's not exactly used often) but that's called a motif, and Soken absolutely loves them. Like you mentioned it's quite challenging to pick out until you notice but FFXIV uses them to tie ideas and places together, just a few random examples:

The Weeping City of Mhach is near Mor Dhona, so the climax of the theme uses the Mor Dhona motif.
Sastasha's theme is the theme of many ARR dungeons and generally the theme of "The Source", so it shows up in Anamnesis since that dungeon is us finally beginning to go home.
Every single expansion uses the main motif of the expansion in its final boss theme - even ARR has "The Maker's Ruin", which is our theme, for the first Ultima phase. That song again shows up in Omega M + F to highlight the Warrior of Light.
Every dungeon theme in the entire game from Heavensward on remixes a motif of the area it's in, with one of the few exceptions being The Aetherochemical Research Facility using the Heavensward motif instead.