Discussion on ARR music and ambient noises.

[Soukyuu]

I've only the Shroud video releases to go off of, and I've yet to hear anything distinct in those. It all seems fitting enough, but bland.

You have to keep in mind you only heard parts of it. Some music tracks have a slow beginning, but get better after a while.

For example, take "unspoken" (Coerthas theme). It has an intro of 20 seconds that sounds pretty bland, but once you reach the violin part (it's a violin, right? <.<) it becomes great.

The beginning music in the Shroud gives off a "bright early morning/beginning" feel to me, and that's perfect for areas around Bentbranch. The SFX fit the atmosphere of a bright forest too. Then we have the Sylph... settlement or something, where the SFX and the music become more ominous (crows caw), fitting the "deep forest" atmosphere. And then there is the dungeon theme, which reminds me of FFVIII dungeons...

It's also not "1 track looping forever in an area" this time, but more of an "introductory tune to each location in an area". I remember hearing something about the music not always playing, but stopping for a while to resume playing after a certain period of time. So you're right about it being less listenable on it's own, but they said that if you run through all the areas, you will get the complete track of an area. Which means, when they release the OST, we will probably get a mixed version of the track that should be perfectly listenable on it's own.

[Shurrikhan]

So you're right about it being less listenable on it's own, but they said that if you run through all the areas, you will get the complete track of an area. Which means, when they release the OST, we will probably get a mixed version of the track that should be perfectly listenable on it's own.

True enough. I was actually keeping slow beginnings in mind when considering them. And, in all honesty, my larger issue might actually just be that I haven't seen enough of the non-standard areas of the new Shroud yet. Both the marshlands and the deep forest look really promising; it's just that aside from the quality of the structures I've seen the contents of the first couple Shroud videos (surrounding Gridania) in too many other MMOs, in both music, setting, and even closely in art style for it to arouse interest just yet. But I can see that as being a fitting starting area for that very same reason -- (over) familiarity.

Again though, I don't think it's an issue (if one at all) of the songs being too particulate to be distinct. Almost every FFXIV track sounds distinctly FFXIV in the first 30 seconds. But right now, minutes in, if someone mixed the tracks into a shuffled GW2 playlist on auto-play, I'd wouldn't be the wiser, and I think that's mostly the instrumentation. Or, just taking the the more recent video ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rduwq-Of9Y&feature=g-u ), as much as people complain about Twilight Over Thanalan being unfitting, I have that issue with the standard choir-string builds in the deep forest section here. It doesn't remind me at all of the area it's playing in. But, as the comparison suggests, this is quite likely subjective again. (The meadows BGM around 2:30 actually sound fine to me.)