"Overlooking Hyrule - Prelude to Calamity" from Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity on the Nintendo Switch (2020)
Composer(s)*: Kumi Tanioka, Reo Uratani, Ryotaro Yagi, & Haruki Yamada
Album: No Official Release
Publisher: Nintendo & Koei Tecmo
Developer: Omega Force
I have been enjoying Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity a lot more than I was expecting, which is to say that even after playing the first 30 minutes of the demo, I felt like was taking a bit of a gamble on a full-priced Switch game when the rest of the games in the Warriors series held zero interest for me, even the previous Hyrule Warriors game that was released on the Wii U and 3DS. I cannot say for sure when in the game this song takes place but based on the other variants of "Overlooking Hyrule" it might actually play if you start the game, make it through the opening cinematic, then quit, then boot the game back up. Maybe? Or it is only after you finish the opening battle and before you do any additional main quests? Or maybe it is played right before Calamity Ganon shows up? The point is, this theme is played when you are in the tower overlooking Hyrule Castle as you look over the map, planning out your next move, and the specific song changes depending on where you are at in the story.
What made me decide on using this variant of "Overlooking Hyrule" was how stripped down it was compared to the one that has been playing for me for the last 15 or so hours, "Overlooking Hyrule - Prelude to Calamity (Map)." And you know, for a song that is essentially just a motif made up of only four individual notes played within the first five seconds and repeated for nearly a minute-and-a-half, with a bit of choral "ahhs" thrown in during the last minute, I find it to be very impactful. It is, at least to me, the definition of a simplistic song full of emotion knowing of where Breath of the Wild takes place and all of the events that will/should happen in order to get the story there. I find it beautiful and heartbreaking, all played out with just four notes.
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
A Tragic Beauty Fades
*P.S. On the page at VGDb.net, it says that Kumi Tanioka wrote on Twitter that she was in charge of the main theme. The Wikipedia page for Age of Calamity lists the four composers as they are listed in the credits, while the VGDB.net page lists these four and an additional nine
So I am an idiot who apparently was too eager to get to playing the game to realize that this track is what plays when you boot up the game, before you press either Continue or New Game. I guess I just blaze through and get to the map screen.
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