Music in ARR

[Tiberious]

I still to this day after having not played FFXI in years whistle the battle theme, the opening login screen theme, the Ronfuare theme, and the San D'Oria theme.

FFXI Music= GREAT, FXIV 1.0 Music = Epic Fail. Get rid of the corny guitar driven 80s music in battles in favor of the orchestral type stuff seen in FFXI.

[Orophin]

Well, that's your opinion and you're welcome to express it. I feel Uematsu did a fine job on the original soundtrack, and the new sound team with Soken and co. have developed some great music once they became more involved. I like Soken's musical taste and I think they will come up with a brilliant soundtrack for ARR.

[Tiberious]

It's not ALL bad. I like the music in the towns, and coerthas is pretty cool. The battle music just doesn't seem to fit with the general theme of the rest of it. It's like one minute you're listening to this woodland type flute sound and then you're thrashing through a heavy metal club (a bad hair metal club from the 80s). That type of music would fit better in the more futuristic Final Fantasy games seen lately. Not in this setting though. See what I mean there?

[Orophin]

It's not ALL bad. I like the music in the towns, and coerthas is pretty cool. The battle music just doesn't seem to fit with the general theme of the rest of it. It's like one minute you're listening to this woodland type flute sound and then you're thrashing through a heavy metal club (a bad hair metal club from the 80s). That type of music would fit better in the more futuristic Final Fantasy games seen lately. Not in this setting though. See what I mean there?

Sure thing. They got this right in a couple of the areas I think, Mor Dhona really stands out. It has a really gloomy atmosphere, gloomy overworld music, then kind of a more upbeat, yet still "dark" vibe about it's battle music. It's hard to get it 100% right, because a battle is a faster tempo situation than just strolling through an area, so it can be hard to find that perfect formula.

I think it was at the 25th Anniversary panel with Yoshi-P and co. that Soken was discussing the music for ARR some, and depending on the situation, the music would change, so it sounds like there's a central song per area, and it gets sped up or something if you're in a battle. Don't know exactly how it'll work but it sounds cool in theory.

[Tiberious]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM8_q...eature=related

Epic.

And really? This battle music doesn't change the tempo enough for battle?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkeCBwIEs1U

[alexhatesmil]

I, too, think the music in XI was great, and I'm really excited to see what the composers are going to do for ARR.

As for the 14 music sounding inappropriate of not Final Fantasy enough, that argument has been beaten to death on these forums. The prog rocky-y sound has always been a part of FF, even in the more traditional fantasy titles. I won't give an exhaustive list, but here are two examples from Final Fantasy IX, one of the most fantasy-y of them all.

Dark Messenger
The Final Battle

Anyway, the current sound team (which includes Mizuta) seems to be headed in a much more XI direction with their latest tracks. And I can only assume that trend will continue in ARR.

[Tiberious]

I was watching the most recent letter from he producer that included gameplay and at least in those areas the ambient music sounds pretty good. Hopefully this is across all the areas!