Topic: Lords of Shadow Opinions (has Spoilers)

[Sindra]

Jorge...I'm totally stealing that image.


Uzo....aww, thank you. =) (Go Team SinJorCombs?)


Ahasverus.... if you like the game, you don't have to justify it to us. You like it because you have your own reasons, and that's fine. No need to try and defend yourself if you feel strongly enough in your convictions. Just be careful about how you come across.

Lords of Shadow has a LOT it needs to build upon. I seriously hope Mr. Cox does continue reading these threads and visiting the various forums for feedback. I'm not trying to bash his work, but I think things need to be approached from an angle that does reflect bits of the past in order to get a good mesh of old-school, middle-school, and new blooded Castlevania feels. There is a happy medium out there...I just know there is.

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

LOL Uzo & Sindra & Harrycombs.

GO TEAM!

Heh heh heh.

[Sindra]

You have no idea how close that hits to home....I just went through all of seasons 1-3 plus whatever of seasons 4 has come out so far within the past week.

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

Yeah I try not to miss the showings and I'm thinking of Netflixing the crap out of that series if possible.
Henchman #21 FTW! :3

[Sindra]

OMG...I LOVE #21. He's gotten the most character development beyond the boys!


But we're totally derailing the topic!

[Valtiel]

Uhh...you're not talking to musicians. (most of us, anyway) We don't CARE about what other great composers think. We know what we want. We're the fans, and we know that themes on Bloody Tears, whilst not a great example of musical composure, works for us because of the simplicity and the catchiness. Who cares if some Mr. So-And-So the Great Magical Musician God says is sucks horsey bollocks. It's worked for most of us for two decades.

REAL music? That's totally subjective material. You are totally entitled to your opinion that Los's music is grand. However I'm saying it didn't tickle my fancy, and gave reasons as to why. I'm saying it because it seems to be an argument that alot of other fans are having.

While I agree with the "team" in spirit (ie, I prefer the old music approach to Aurajo's brilliant but possibly unfit effort), I think you're missing the point.

You can't go praising the old CV music legacy and then dismiss LoS' soundtrack as generic. It's not. In fact, in terms of musical "quality" (the unsubjective part of music, the complexity, structure and such) LoS' soundtrack is probably the "best" CV soundtrack so far.

Does it matter for us? Not really. I think nobody here really cares if Bloody Tears started over as an extremely simplicistic and repetitive tune, and if Yamane's work wouldn't probably be recognized as anything special by more famous, more talented musicians. Appreciation of art is subjective, and catchy tunes worked for CV for 20 years for a damn good reason. I hope Cox is still reading too because while I think some of LoS' soundtrack was absolutely worthy of entering the hall of great CV tunes (Hunting Path, the Stone Titan, Gabriel Theme, Final Confrontation) it's clear that some of the best pieces were those who picked on the old stuff. Courtyard, the Music Box.. they felt a lot more special. Now we can't ask a talented composer like Aurajo to spend his time remixing old tunes, but I think it's legitimate to expect him to try and shape his music in a way that feels in continuity with the series.

But I agree with Ash on the fact that the tone of the criticism is absolutely misplaced. It's like saying that Lady Gaga is better than Beethoven because she's catchy and he's boring. LoS' soundtrack is awesome and it destroys most of his competition, from God of War to Dragon Age to (dare I say) Morrowind and Oblivion. It just doesn't work that well in continuity with the CV legacy.

But don't think adapting the old CV music style to 3d adventuring is easy.
Consider one aspect for a second: suspension of disbelief.

2D Castlevania games have very little of that. I dare say Ecclesia does to a greater point, but in general, it's not like you're playing SotN and not feeling you're in a game. 3D games have much stronger suspension of disbelief, and music can disrupt it. If the music isn't narrating what is happening on screen, it risks breaking the suspension.
In 2D games, you can have vampire killer on loop because unless you're stumbling on a boss your traversal of a particular level isn't particularly tied to a narrative. You're constantly jumping and fighting and you don't mind the repetition of monsters and tiles because that's how the game works. You're playing and humming to great music while you do.
In a 3D game you can't have the same music going while you traverse an empty, gloomy hallway and then while you rappel down a wall and then while you fight small trolls and then while you fight a 3 stories tall ogre. Take chapter 4. You couldn't have something like Vampire Killer on loop - it would feel disconnected at some point. The mood of the covered bridge with the lightbeams would be broken, telling the rappeling from the fighting would feel weird and so on. As you can notice in LoS, in 3D games the music is "triggered" by the onscreen events; it's woven in the narrative part of the gameplay.
Sure you can play loops in 3d games - look at LoI. A game that is remembered for great music and... awful level design. Don't think the two things aren't tied. That kind of music approach wouldn't work in coherent, unrepetitive level design. If you think about it, catchy loops work really well when the content is repetitive. They sort of become a redeeming quality, but I think the game part is more important, and shouldn't be sacrificed to the music.

Then again, there's places where a catchy loop can completely fit a 3D game too. The mechanical tower would have worked wonders like that. Boss battles work fine with loops. The castle hallway too, and when you got such a great music tradition as CV does, you actually can make the effort of designing some levels ON the music. The village siege for example could have been easily adapted to a "Bloody Tears" version by having a longer amount of waves of vampires before Brauner showed up.



(And as a side note, I understand the frustration that comes from seeing a generation of games apparently bent on stripping videogames from all the things we loved as kids. Too many FPSs, too many games that feel the same, way too many orchestrated soundtracks that have little to no soul and almost no iconic track to remember... it's all true. I just think in this specific case a certain amount of critical thinking is needed. MS could have done better - or rather more - in terms of musical continuity, but this kind of criticism is unwarranted).

[thernz]

Contextual music is fine, but reusing the same tracks isn't. If anything, it's a detriment to the feeling of progression because you anticipate a new song, but end up with Waterfalls of Agartha for some reason, knowing you're in a new area. Like using a looped melody in one whole stage that has distinct segments, that too can disrupt suspension of belief. It works better in, say, a non-linear game like Morrowind but in such a linear game like Lords of Shadow, it's always depending on new content as the player pushes through. And with how visually different the areas, the music belies its own ability to build the mood. It may be building on the action, but it isn't augmenting on the environment itself. It doesn't help that the structure of the music itself doesn't really lend well to usage as contextual music either.

Also I think your point about 2D and 3D games is far too generalizing. They're both wholly different beasts when dealing with mechanics. If anything, the way you're describing the 2D games suggests a far more harmonic pace in level design since they are able to combine elements and you are describing 3D games like they are action movies that move scene to scene, but each one has a wildly different pace because it cannot successfully merge its distinct elements. Of course, the way LoS and other games are built, that seems intentional. But I kinda find that to be an odd game design decision, stratifying the elements and building bulk rather than creating a lean set of abilities that can be used in many contexts, harmonic with each other. I'm not really arguing that the use of a single song is better than contextual music, I'm just sayin'.

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

I happen to like a lot of the music from LoS.  It's the reason I crank out my 10-speaker Home Theatre system when I play.  But while it is quite great, it is not memorable.

If you want a more apples to apples comparison, I can easily hum the Star Wars theme that John Williams composed.  There isn't a single tune from LoS that is memorable enough to 'stick'.  One can argue that it is an irrelevance to the soundtrack, but I think it's relevant for a Castlevania soundtrack.  To ignore this is to forget a key aspect of the franchise, in my opinion.

[Valtiel]

Also I think your point about 2D and 3D games is far too generalizing. They're both wholly different beasts when dealing with mechanics. If anything, the way you're describing the 2D games suggests a far more harmonic pace in level design since they are able to combine elements and you are describing 3D games like they are action movies that move scene to scene, but each one has a wildly different pace because it cannot successfully merge its distinct elements. Of course, the way LoS and other games are built, that seems intentional. But I kinda find that to be an odd game design decision, stratifying the elements and building bulk rather than creating a lean set of abilities that can be used in many contexts, harmonic with each other. I'm not really arguing that the use of a single song is better than contextual music, I'm just sayin'.

I think in this case "harmonic" is a very generous way to say "flat". Besides, it's not like in most 2D games the music always fits what's happening on screen - it basically never does. It doesn't even try.

That's why the 2D era gave us some of the best music the videogame industry ever offered. Yuzo Koshiro didn't have to care about what was happening on screen when writing Streets of Rage's music. It fitted the action as well as it fitted the pause menu.

This has nothing to do with the actual quality of the music - in fact, things went downhill from there - but those music tracks had the benefit of being completely removed from the onscreen action. And thus they had to work on their own; that's why the work so well even when you're not playing the game. They're their own thing.

But if you think at SotN, when you're in a level, that one tune is looping - it loops while you run and it loops while you jump, it loops while you fight and while there's no enemy on screen, it loops while you explore and while you dropped the controller to frenchkiss your girlfriend.
In a game like LoS, if there's epic booming music on and you're standing still, you're gonna die, because epic booming fight music = monsters onscreen. No monster onscreen? Relaxed/ominous/suspenseful music cue.

It's a completely different way to write music. In your standard CV game, each area has a tune, each tune is a loop. In LoS, you enter Malphas' tower and you get an ominous tune, and when you start climbing you get another variation at higher pace, and when you trigger the ghosts a combat tune starts, and so on. It's clear that the music here is enslaved to the game, and it has to be judged while keeping that in mind. Ironically, CV was one of the first sagas that actually introduced music shifts as mood markers (like of the first 80 seconds of SCIV) even if still in a stage > music form.

And on the topic of how a loop can fit a more harmonic game design, the only case we have in CV's history is the LoI/CoD games, and we know how disasterous the level design does. Once again, you need to put either the music at the service of the game, or the game at the service of the music.

[Valtiel]

I happen to like a lot of the music from LoS.  It's the reason I crank out my 10-speaker Home Theatre system when I play.  But while it is quite great, it is not memorable.

If you want a more apples to apples comparison, I can easily hum the Star Wars theme that John Williams composed.  There isn't a single tune from LoS that is memorable enough to 'stick'.  One can argue that it is an irrelevance to the soundtrack, but I think it's relevant for a Castlevania soundtrack.  To ignore this is to forget a key aspect of the franchise, in my opinion.

That's a very good point.

To me, some tracks are just good and "hummable". Gabriel's theme above all - I really love it and it's quite ironic that it's a "quiet" theme. Hunting Path is really good and memorable to me, and while I won't often hum Courtyard, for very obvious reasons it's burnt in my mind.

But yes, I definitely agree with you there. I just think it's more a limit of game design more than the music itself.
LoS is an extremely narrative-oriented game. That's one thing I really appreciate as a fan of videogame narrative, but that strikes me as odd as a CV fan. CV is, since forever, a very game-ish saga. Not much about storytelling, almost completely about gameplay. If you play LoS and, say, God of War or Ninja Gaiden back to back, you can see that in structure old CV games are possibly closer to GoW than LoS. In GoW, you could have looped tunes fairly easily. It's basically a glorified side-scrolling beat'em up. The pacing is essentially flat, with fighting taking the vast majority of the game.
LoS doesn't have many cutscenes, but there's some pretty heavy handed narration woven in the gameplay. You're never stuck fighting too long - think of the infiltration of the abbey. First you fight the vampires then it's portcullis time, then zobek is locked then it's trap time then it's puzzle time then it's fighting then it's puzzle - at very short intervals. Casual dialogue often popping in and all. Chapter IV? How do you loop when it's ominous exploration then rappelling then mobs then a boss in the span of what, 6 minutes?
LoS plays out a LOT like a movie which, in many ways, it's a bigger element of discontinuity with the saga than the 2D > 3D jump. If Cox and co want to strike closer to home next time, they need to "slow down" the game's internal narrative and have more drawn out and "game-ish" sections, letting combat go on for 10 minutes and giving up on having a realistically sized tower because it's not a long enough climb to build a trationally-paced section on.

LoS feels absolutely like CV to me, but I appreciate it better when I take it as a completely new formula than when I try to find continuity with past games. It's just built differently.

[Joachim]

In a game like LoS, if there's epic booming music on and you're standing still, you're gonna die, because epic booming fight music = monsters onscreen. No monster onscreen? Relaxed/ominous/suspenseful music cue.

Not quite, I've seen several meaningless shifts in tonality while simply wandering around or exploring or "platforming" in the game.
context is all it has, and contextually speaking, it is poorly handled.

and to call it "removed" from the game is a bit much; it simply serves its purpose differently. the music as a whole is more cohesively defined to represent the atmosphere and feeling of an entire area rather than just a single haphazard moment.

[Jorge D. Fuentes]

I'm not sure what to say, because in a game like Ocarina of Time, you have variations on a theme when you're standing still.  You have a 'battle theme' that interjects when you're ambushed by an enemy or group of enemies (in fact, you have varying battle themes).  This started back then (even the N64 Castlevanias did this).  It was even further polished in Wind Waker with the Ocean music.  Serene music, Battle music, Big Battle music, etc. all seamlessly interweaving into the themes the games have.

Thus, it is not an excuse not to have great memorable music that cannot have its big moments.  A beautiful tune like "Waterfalls" (which is one of the few I can remember from the LoS soundtrack) plays, then enemies show up and interrupt it with a battle theme, then it plays again.  This worked!

Why not do that only with more tunes, or with tunes that, while they may not be 'epic' (I hate using this word 'cuz it's just stupid these days in its overuse, like saying "Raw" or "Brutal", as someone else pointed out in another thread),  they are beautiful, [underline]memorable,[/underline] and defining of an area.  It would have been nice if I heard a tune appropriate for a clock tower, and a tune appropriate for the necromancer's abyss, and a tune for Wygol village.  Whether they are subtle, have big crescendos, the ability to be interrupted, or fast-paced versions when the action comes in or not, I know it could have been done, because I saw it happen 10+ years ago with N64 games, and later on with some Gamecube games.

[Valtiel]

Not quite, I've seen several meaningless shifts in tonality while simply wandering around or exploring or "platforming" in the game.
context is all it has, and contextually speaking, it is poorly handled.

Respectable opinion; I can't say I agree. In fact I think one of the reason people say the OST is "monotonous" is because while the track number is huge (over 100) they're often very similar to each other probably to avoid feeling disconnected.

and to call it "removed" from the game is a bit much; it simply serves its purpose differently. the music as a whole is more cohesively defined to represent the atmosphere and feeling of an entire area rather than just a single haphazard moment.

I would have a terrible time thinking of any of my favourite CV tunes as "cohesively representing the atmosphere and feeling of an entire area". What does Vampire Killer or Bloody Tears represent? The Land of Exciting Combat™   ?

I'd say LoI is the closest to be a fair representation of that mentality - some of the tunes do a great job of describing the mood of an area. But they do nothing to represent the onscreen events or action, and thus are removed and disconnected. There's little to do about it.

[Valtiel]

I'm not sure what to say, because in a game like Ocarina of Time, you have variations on a theme when you're standing still.  You have a 'battle theme' that interjects when you're ambushed by an enemy or group of enemies (in fact, you have varying battle themes).  This started back then (even the N64 Castlevanias did this).  It was even further polished in Wind Waker with the Ocean music.  Serene music, Battle music, Big Battle music, etc. all seamlessly interweaving into the themes the games have.

Thus, it is not an excuse not to have great memorable music that cannot have its big moments.  A beautiful tune like "Waterfalls" (which is one of the few I can remember from the LoS soundtrack) plays, then enemies show up and interrupt it with a battle theme, then it plays again.  This worked!

Why not do that only with more tunes, or with tunes that, while they may not be 'epic' (I hate using this word 'cuz it's just stupid these days in its overuse, like saying "Raw" or "Brutal", as someone else pointed out in another thread),  they are beautiful, [underline]memorable,[/underline] and defining of an area.  It would have been nice if I heard a tune appropriate for a clock tower, and a tune appropriate for the necromancer's abyss, and a tune for Wygol village.  Whether they are subtle, have big crescendos, the ability to be interrupted, or fast-paced versions when the action comes in or not, I know it could have been done, because I saw it happen 10+ years ago with N64 games, and later on with some Gamecube games.

I probably expressed myself poorly because in LoS' case that's my perspective too.

It worked in places, but they needed more unique, identifiable tunes. Ch IV was almost perfect, a lot of the later chapters were... forgettable. The music quality is high, but it definitely could have used more "life".

[Joachim]

not so much castlevania I or II, but instances like Super Castlevania IV with The Trick Manor, and the waterfall/cave/city sections of level 3; even more so with Symphony of the Night, and songs like finale toccata, crystal tear drops, and heavenly doorway; they were atmospherically defined because the game was atmospherically defined. combat was a matter of environmental hazard rather than 'epic struggle', as is the case in lords.

similarly, super metroid has fantastic use of music. fusion takes a slightly more contextual/cinematic approach, but it does so with style, carving itself a unique identity while not eschewing melodically driven music.

But they do nothing to represent the onscreen events or action, and thus are removed and disconnected.

yes, they do nothing to consciously represent it (as in, changing contextually), but that does not mean it is disconnected or that somehow it doesn't 'fit' with the action; the songs are intentionally designed to fit a myriad of differing contexts. heavenly doorway in symphony of the night has the feeling of both a dreadful atmosphere and pulsating action/exploration, and many songs follow in this vein.