MIDI Week Singles: "City of Sails" - Sword Coast Legends (PC)

"City of Sails" from Sword Coast Legends on Windows, OSX, Linux, PlayStation 4, Xbox One (2016)
Composer: Inon Zur
Album: Sword Coast Legends Original Game Soundtrack
Label: n-Space
Publisher: Digital Extremes
Developer: n-Space & Digital Extremes

This song took me by surprise for a couple of reasons.

First, I primarily know Inon Zur from his music from Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, which like the landscape of the games, is pretty bleak and desolate. In a video game about scouring a desolate wasteland of human existence, having a majestic soundscape is not really fitting with the setting. I also know that Inon Zur can write non-post-apocalyptic music from his score from The Elder Scrolls: Blades game, and while there are more melodic pieces on that soundtrack, this Secondly, the name, "City of Sails" refers to the city of Luskan in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting in Dungeons & Dragons. My previous experience with Luskan before listening to this soundtrack was from Neverwinter Nights, where the city in that story was depicted as being filled with pirates and bandits and sewers full of rats and undead, and is generally not a safe place; revisiting Jeremy Soule's score is somewhat different from my memory however. Before reading "Streams of Silver," where Drizzt and Co. make a stop off in Luskan before heading to Sidesaddle, I had never read any other out-of-game depictions of Luskan. This is what I had in my head while listening to "City of Sails" for the first time.

I have not played Sword Coast Legends so I cannot say how this music is presented in the game, if there is a sweeping cinematic while Inon Zur's score swells. What I imagine with this song is a much more idyllic seaside port city with the rays of the morning sun dancing off of lapping waves against crowded docks. Maybe a group of adventures returning home after a long and harrowing adventure. Incredibly naive I know, especially with all of the quabbles going on in the Tower of the Arcane.

I just think this is a beautiful song and I will likely play it the next time I happen to find myself looking out on a lake with a cup of coffee watching the sun rise up behind the forest while the light hits the water.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian