dbsmith's Blogs

Take your favourite action sequence from a movie. Now take away the music. Not nearly as good right? I loves me a good musical action film score. No, I'm not talking about your "music inspired by..." crap. A good orchestral piece that gets the blood pumping. Think of the last 15 minutes of The Rock (full orchestral rock sounds), think the bank robbery sequence from Heat (simple tension building percussion beats), think the whole Dark Knight film...well, I'm sure you've all got your favourites.

Why do they work so well, making those sequences so memorable? Well, I'd argue that it's an alignment, a synchronization of the music with the events on screen.  The music evokes certain emotions, feelings, at certain times. When these evoked feelings match what I see on screen as well, the adrenaline (for example) I feel is raised significantly. And when the music is slightly....off, it really destroys my film going experience. Many films I've seen have an exciting sequence on screen, and yet the music feels completely off. You may have had that feeling, watching a fantastic car chase for example, and yet feeling curiously detached, as if "why am I not engaged here?"  More often than not, I find the answer is that music just does not draw you into the film. If it's doing its job well, it will engage you with the film yet never become an overpowering presence.

For me, this feeling that comes with a great movie set piece and a great accompanying score, is very very rare in video games. I'm not really talking about a cool theme song that accompanys your characters (Nintendo, I'm looking at you), I'm talking about a more "cinematic" experience, that engages you on a visceral level. A great example - remember that Halo 2 (i think?) encounter with the scarab? Halo's theme kicked in electric guitar style as you raced alongside it before jumping into it and blowing it up? Awesome!

One of the best examples I've encountered in a game would be Shadow of the Colossus, and I'll try and explain why (we played this game with a wall projector - HIGHLY recommended!). When you get to, say, the first colossus, the music kicks into loud heavy da dANT....da DANT..... sounds (forgive my inability to describe music verbally), that matches the "ohmigoditssobig" feeling, the imposing nature of the creature in front of you. The track then goes into a foreboding almost horror-like track, where you're running around its feet like crazy, matching the "how the hell do i kill something this big?" feeling.

Then, you have a breakthrough. You have managed to grab hold of its fur and begin climbing. You get higher, you reach its weak point, it can't reach you but it tries to shake you off, you hold on for dear life, the camera swinging wildly, you draw your sword and rear back to stab.....all the while, the music has shifted up a gear into a heroic, exhilarating victory piece. The feeling of achievement, of adrenaline, is multiplied by this music. For me, this is a very cinematic feeling.

So for me, this kind of example is rare. Feel free to bombard me with examples that I haven't encountered yet. But why? Well it could be (speculating wildly) because the budget for gaming music doesn't allow for these set pieces. Gaming music has to be reused and reused over the course of the entire game, else the makers arent really getting their money's worth. A movie is around 100 minutes long - so one 5-10 minute musical set piece occupies around 10% of the film as a whole.  A decent game is closer to 8-10 hours, so one small action set-piece is only around 1% of the game's total time (don't quote me on these figures I'm making up as I go). Perhaps this is why game makers don't incorporate unique musical ques the way I would like? It's a pity, because often those giant action set pieces are what really make the game - imagine if you had a musical score that matched that action perfectly.

Which brings me to the primary problem. How do you synchronize music with a protagonist that is under the control of an unknown entity (i.e. the player)? In a movie, the creatorss can pinpoint the exact frame that Bruce Willis will jump into a car, drive into a helicopter, and score accordingly. Not so easy with games. It's no good to have a pumping high energy soundtrack when the player has decided to stop and admire the scenery. As in Shadow, triggers are needed to change the music at certain points, and also a certain trust in the player to do the right thing at the right time.

For me, its fine to say "ok, big boss battle here, so therefore lets play this action track." What's BETTER for me, is to be more like "ok, the character has just picked up this certain weapon needed to defeat the boss, lets start this musical cue" and then "right, the character is now running towards the boss (not away from!) and is about to kick arse, lets up the tempo in the music a bit" and finally "ok the character has fired their last rocket which is about to blow up the boss, lets give em some victory music".  How much better is that than just one musical track?

That's basically what I'm after in a game. I think it would immensely heighten the experience and immersion, making a more cinematic feeling. Let's hope the game creators feel the same way.