With the announcement of the nominations for "Best Score and Music" from the Jeff Keighley Awards, sorry, The Game Awards, I had considered listening to and featuring a track from each game as an upcoming MIDI Week Single. Then, while listening through the soundtrack to Hades II by Darren Korb, who we've featured in the past, I began to feel like a poseur.
I haven't played any of the games that were nominated, mainly because I haven't played a lot of games that were released this year (2025) that I didn't receive from developers/publishers through Keymailer. Not because the games didn't interest me, just that I'm finding it hard to buy new games at new game prices. So here I am listening to the soundtracks to Silksong and Hades II, and while there've been quite a few songs that have piqued my interest, I don't really know what to say about them because I have no context for the song itself. I could go by the title, be it "Fourth Chorus" or "Moonlight Guide Us," and then look up a playthrough to see how the song fits contextually with the game, but that just doesn't feel quite right.
Yes, I have done this exact same thing with older games, like recently with Apple Town Story and Metal Masters, and I think the main difference is that those are significantly older games or games that I am less likely to get around to playing because they're difficult to find, or out of print, or they're just not compatible with modern hardware.
So then why do I feel a smidgen of shame featuring music from Silksong or Clair Obsure: Expedition 33 or Ghost of Yotei?" As best as I can explain it, I think it's because it feels like each of these games (along with Death Stranding 2) have fervent fan bases that if I talk about the music in the games, I'll be asked what my three favorite tracks are from the game, and what my three favorite moments are from the game, and what's my least favorite element from the last third of the game, and how come I haven't played Hollow Knight yet if I'm talking about Silksong, and that I'm not a real fan because I haven't had to wait eight years between releases. You know, shit that I went through in Jr. High because god forbid I wear a Grateful Dead or a Megadeth shirt without being grilled about what my five favorite Dave Mustain solos were and why can't I play them on guitar, and why "Countdown to Extinction" is an inferior album compared to "Rust in Peace"? Because every album released after "Rust in Peace" is an inferior album is the easy answer.
The short answer is that it's easier to talk about music from older games that fewer people are likely to have played than music from modern games (games released in the last 15-20 years, apparently) without fear of online harassment. I've also found that with some older games like Ace Combat Advance, Dragon Spirit, or Amida, that people are simply happy to hear from a nostalgic favorite than care deeply if I've played the game or not; and I'm always upfront in the articles on that point. I am a moderately soft-spoken introvert after all, which is why I still write on the Internet.
P.S. I kid you not, while listening to the Hades II soundtrack, specifically "Coral Crown", a coworker walked by my office and said something along the lines of, "Hades II, nice track!" I sheepishly said, "Oh, yeah," as if I knew exactly the context of the song. But then he continued walking to the bathroom, so that was the end of our conversation.
No comments:
Post a Comment