Smart Jason

Original Songs in Games

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Shadow of Mordor does a very clever little thing of dispensing much of its main character's backstory through short snippets of dialogue which play with a hazy memory reverberation effect on its loading screens. You'll hear Talion give his son his first sword, his wife Ioreth reveal her pregnancy, his acceptance of his station at the Black Gate, and so on. If you're playing the game loaded on an SSD, of course, you'll likely just hear the first few words of most of these and skip over the rest of them as the level will load before the, already brief, memories finish. One that I made sure never to skip, however, and (to my knowledge) the only that gets repeated from the game itself, is the sound of Ioreth singing, from the stealth tutorial. "On winds and waters may you cross, see mountains white and blue..."

 

I am a fan of musicals. Most people I meet are not, so I get to explain to them why often enough (if they'll hear me out). It's not just a matter of being exposed to musicals at the right time in my childhood development - I'd venture most of us grow up with the same canon of Disney films, have "A Whole New World" and "Heigh Ho" and "Let It Go" etched into their pop culture subconscious. For me, however, there is something extremely profound about the combination of lyrical song and narrative, which has led me through a life of not just singing television theme songs to myself because they're catchy, but because they're a conduit to immerse myself in all the feelings and memories I have of great shows, of maintaining this encyclopedic library of showtune lyrics in my head (it's far from truly encompassing, to be fair to myself, but what I love, I know by heart) because I listen to their soundtracks ad nauseam and embarrassingly in-character.

 

For me, there is something in the act of a character expressing feeling and motivation through song which makes a work of fiction suddenly transcend.

 

And I am, stylistically speaking, a fiend for that Rennaisance Faire style of medieval fantasy song which Shadow of Mordor reprises. Whether it's the Lord of the Rings films, memories of sobbing to myself with a spontaneous outpouring of emotion during (by far) the most innocuous chapter in book three of A Song of Ice and Fire just because Tom of Sevenstreams was singing to Arya in it, or the only moments of life I was ever able to find in all of Skyrim:

 

 

Now, I put a lot of time into Skyrim, and finished the story, but a game like that never takes root with me due to a lack of an emotional core, a feeling of any true character identity or acknowledgment in the world. Sitting in a tavern, requesting a song, though, those were the minutes I forgot that mightiest complaint.

 

So, this is a thread about lyrical songs, which - if you're anything like me - can do more than any of other element of design to bring out the vitality and soul of a game. And, obviously, I'm not talking about instrumental music and soundtracks as a whole - those get more than enough love. I mean everything from the absurdly saccharine:

 

 

To the chilling moment you know that a game with one of the most renowned soundtracks in recent years isn't fooling around:

 

 

Nor do I mean the term "original song" to be so limiting as to exclude such goosebump-inducing utilizations of real music in original ways as:

 

 

You see, I play games in order to experience an emotional profundity that I can't achieve through any other artistic medium due to the interactivity (and blah, blah, blah, all the other pontificating navel-gazing we've all read a million times, I know). Song is a vessel through which that can be made with such impact that it's almost startling. I could go on, I would love to just keep posting YouTube videos, but for now I hope to encourage others to embed some of their favorite songs and moments and bards while we wait for that holy grail of a true musical game to be invented.

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I'm struggling to come up with any examples of this. The closest thing I can think of right now is Mona singing "Late Goodbye" (which I think was composed for the game) in the shower, but it's more of a easter egg than a sincere character moment. It appears in a few more places in the game, you walk in on a bad guy playing it on the piano, I think some guys whistle it etc. It's a small touch that I like, but not the same thing as you talked about.

 

edit: forgot to mention that I'm talking about Max Payne 2.

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King Of The Creatures in Sam And Max Hit The Road. A break for a (diegetic, though barely justified) musical number!

 

 

(plus this video includes a bonus expositionary musical number!)

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Metal Gear Solid has had a good few original songs created specifically for the games. Snake Eater is particularly noteworthy for its (ridiculous) game-orientated lyrics. :tup:

 

 

 

 

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I've never played MSG3, but the theme always played on Salty Bet when I was addicted to gambling there. It was the jap version though hehe.

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This from Kentucky Route Zero!

Kentucky Route Zero - Act III - Too Late to Love …:

Gorgeous and elegiac.

And possibly the first instance of this?

King's Quest 6 Soundtrack - Girl in the tower:

Yeah, not a classic.

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Alan Wake features this original song quite prominently:

 

 

In the game it's attributed to the fictitious band Old Gods of Asgard, the lyrics serving as a roadmap of sorts; Max Payne 2 soundtrack contributors Poets of the Fall are the actual talent behind it.

 

Likely a purer example of what you're after is Leliana's Song from Dragon Age: Origins.

 

 

Its

is as awkwardly animated as your average BioWare sex scene, which does rather ruin the moment. As for the lyrics, they're supposed to be Elvish so I'm not sure if they really mean anything, although based on the tone they probably buck the Elven trend by not revolving around shanking shems.

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Every time you summoned the robot Impact for boss fights in Mystical Ninja: Starring Goemon, this glorious theme song played.

 

And the buildup to the final boss? An onstage song and dance number. (0:55 in)

 

 

You do Squinky a disservice

Dominique Pamplemousse is so charming! Structurally, it's like a full-length version of the

scene from Curse of Monkey Island, syncing every single line of dialogue to the soundtrack.

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Exile Vilify, an original song by the National for Portal 2 (found playing on a radio in a little alcove in one level):

 

 

Suddenly makes me feel like I'm in a PT Anderson film when I find it.

 

(And of course there are the two ending songs from the Portal games.)

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Excellent call on the Alan Wake track. I really liked how that game

in general.

 

Surprised nobody's posted the Curse of Monkey Island number yet. It's even interactive!

 

 

Edit: Noyb snuck it in at the end of his last post. Still, best ever.

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Following on from my last post, Gravity Rush also features a vocal track sung in a fictitious language:

 

 

It's reserved for the credits, but as the same language is used throughout the game — and the excellent soundtrack is so core to the tone and personality — I feel vaguely justified in exposing more people to it.

 

Whilst trying to think of suitable inclusions for this thread I realised that vocal tracks are actually fairly common in Japanese games. A notable example would be the Silent Hill series which encompasses many lyrical works which relate to the events of the games or recount a particular character's perspective. Naturally they tend to be rather less effervescent than the above:

 

 

I'm having a much harder time recalling instances of characters themselves singing. The only ones that spring to mind, other than the synthetic warble of the opera scene from FFVI, are this rather spoilery example from Valkyria Chronicles:

 

 

And Jodie's optional busking from Beyond: Two Souls:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsZak4SALG8

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You do Squinky a disservice

 

Oh wow, I'd never heard of this game or its developer, but this video is incredibly charming (shit, Noyb used this exact word!) and both are now definitely on my radar! This looks awesome!

 

Metal Gear Solid has had a good few original songs created specifically for the games. Snake Eater is particularly noteworthy for its (ridiculous) game-orientated lyrics. :tup:

 

Snake Eater was absolutely on my mind when I created this topic and was on a longer list of "honorable mentions," so to speak, that I nearly etcetera-d but didn't embed in my first post, but I reconsidered and got rid of that list because I didn't want to deny anyone the privilege of linking those songs themselves. Now, Calling to the Night is a great example! It's actually my favorite of the Metal Gear Solid credits songs (possibly blasphemous since Portable Ops is of dubious canon), but more than just that, the fact that Snake has his iPod in Metal Gear Solid 4 means you get Calling to the Night, Snake Eater, and all these other tracks to listen to during any given moment of that game and I think that's actually a really powerful piece of design! You can override the Harry Gregson-Williams score of any action set piece with that iPod, or make stealth sections all the more nostalgic and contemplative; I think it's a great addition given how fond that game is for its history.

 

This from Kentucky Route Zero!

Kentucky Route Zero - Act III - Too Late to Love …

 

I've spent the last couple of days thinking of more examples to post when I came back to this thread and I'd figured that, at some point, every single game with an original song that I'd played had crossed my mind and it would just be a matter of remembering them all when I actually sat down to do so. I absolutely cannot believe I forgot about this scene in Kentucky Route Zero! It stands as, in my mind, possibly the most definitive thesis statement for the game itself to date and as what games and narrative song can do with one another interactively. Absolutely beautiful choice.

 

Alan Wake features this original song quite prominently:

 

In the game it's attributed to the fictitious band Old Gods of Asgard, the lyrics serving as a roadmap of sorts; Max Payne 2 soundtrack contributors Poets of the Fall are the actual talent behind it.

 

This is another I had in mind! Thrik is totally correct, Remedy used music brilliantly in Alan Wake - the soundtrack songs between episodes were great, the diagetic music was super evocative, and the original songs were not only good (I actually really like The Poet and the Muse, even if I feel self-conscious saying so because it sounds like the kind of song people with better taste than me in high school would make fun of me for liking) they were knowingly etched into the plot. It is a uniquely Remedy experience to play an action set piece in a game while characters in the game sing a song written for the game about the lore of the game:

 

 

Exile Vilify, an original song by the National for Portal 2 (found playing on a radio in a little alcove in one level):

 

This is such a fantastic choice to point out. Even though Still Alive became a phenomenon, and I actually think Want You Gone is genuinely touching and a great song, Exile Vilify stands absolutely supreme among original songs in games as something you can just listen to free of context if you so choose, while also feeling the emotional weight of Portal 2's hidden-in-the-cracks backstory (if your own current emo pain isn't sufficient). It's the only song mentioned in this post that's in my iTunes library, certainly. Which is to be expected, being commissioned by a real band and all, but that just makes its use in Portal all the stronger.

 

And Jodie's optional busking from Beyond: Two Souls:

 

I actually didn't know that this was an original song! I love Beyond, I'm a huge fan of Quantic Dream, actually. And while one of my only major complaints with the game would be that I thought the homeless section was too sentimental and dishonest, the presence of this scene was doubtlessly its high point for me. What a lovely, heartbreaking performance - and I guess it's here I should point out that I could make an entirely different thread that would read almost exactly the same called "Winter and Snow in Games." So, someone singing on guitar on a snow-covered city block is basically my idea of a perfect setting for any piece of art, particular a game. Thank you for shouting this out!

 

These are all awesome examples! I was definitely worried after I made this thread that I didn't explain myself well enough or that the topic was too similar to the myriad other music topics on this or any other video game board, and both are still probably true, but I love what's being linked. Let me try to add some more:

 

 

First off, there are a few purer (man, that's a loaded word to use in conjunction with this game) examples from BioShock Infinite, and its DLC, than what I chose in my first post. There's a point in the original game where you travel through a childhood educational facility and are treated to the peppy, catchy

. (Side note: Having never heard
before playing the game, I naïvely and blithely assumed it was original for the game and - if it were - it and the sniper fight it poignantly proceeds just before the Hall of Heroes would be my sole example from the game, because it was such a perfect game moment, in my eyes.) With a particular nod to Bucking Bronco, there's also the
in Burial at Sea. I especially love how they weave in and out of earshot as you explore the space, ever-present, ever-advertising this utility you're using to brutalize the maniacs in your path. But, what I choose to highlight is the lone protest song of Rapture. I hope and imagine everyone playing Burial at Sea stopped and sat to this not-quite-Guthrie. What a wonderful, passionate way to color life in Rapture through a lens like never before! It makes audio diaries seem so horribly dry by comparison.

 

 

I almost feel like this one is cheating. Wolfenstein: The New Order just recently received so much praise for its world-building skill in developing the Nazi-ruled 1960s and arguably the most critical part of that was its incredibly clever use of music. As you can read on Wikipedia, for the score of the game, the team eschewed Wagner and classical Nazi sounds, deciding that the tone of the game would be better served by analogue equipment and a soundtrack that is "a tribute to all things guitar." (To say nothing of J being the greatest character in any war game ever made.) Along the way, three stylistic parodies also made it into the game - of which my favorite is Mond, Mond, Ja, Ja by Die Käfer (or: Moon, Moon, Yeah, Yeah by The Beetles). What even makes the song more than just a catchy German take on Twist and Shout with a premonitory title is that you can find more news articles detailing Die Käfer's place in world of Wolfenstein in the environment, even suggesting they have a role in the resistance. Like The Pie Song above, an excellent use of environmental storytelling, with a musical twist (ünd shout; sorry, I'm really tired).

 

 

Payday 2 is a game that gets unfairly overlooked in intelligent gaming forums such as this one, in my opinion. I'm rather addicted to it, for one, and its developers have a real flair for keeping alive the live action trailer. The above one is rather long, but the first minute, cut to the original song Drifting written for the game, is a wonderful introduction to its main character. Again, the theme of song being a hallmark of developers who seem to truly love their IPs is held true to pattern here (and this is far from the first Overkill has commissioned, perhaps more in a later post). The song isn't just a listenable country number, it harmonizes with the visual Easter eggs of the trailer and you know from its very first line that it's for Payday.

 

Is there a limit to how many videos you can embed in a single post? Oh God, forgive this faux pas (post pas?) To be sheepishly continued.

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From above, so below:

 

 

Look, obviously I don't care what the rest of your opinions are about VII and which Final Fantasy games were good or if any of them ever were or whatever. I'm sure you're all wrong, and I'm right, and that's all there is to it. It's just not up for debate that in 1997, getting to the final boss of a game and suddenly hearing an orchestra followed by Latin chanting was not only going to blow your stupid kid brain out through your head, it was legitimately groundbreaking. Sure, maybe One-Winged Angel isn't the most sophisticated song ever written (Bach probably had something slightly better, maybe), and perhaps some PC games had Latin in them before Final Fantasy VII did, but this was a time when it wasn't absolutely - tediously - expected for your endgame to include epic chanting and dead language-resurrecting apotheosis on the part of the villain. It wasn't astonishing because I was twelve, it was astonishing because they were doing something unparalleled in scope, mood, and production. It was iconic, and it couldn't have been achieved but for that music.
 

 

This was real good too.

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Can't think of anything, but wow, that Kentucky Route Zero song blew my mind. The Gravity Rush track is awesome - so effervescent and really makes me want to try the game.

 

And I don't think I'll ever tire of the theme for Impact, from Mystical Ninja. Love that game to bits.

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Look, obviously I don't care what the rest of your opinions are about VII and which Final Fantasy games were good or if any of them ever were or whatever. I'm sure you're all wrong, and I'm right, and that's all there is to it. It's just not up for debate that in 1997, getting to the final boss of a game and suddenly hearing an orchestra followed by Latin chanting was not only going to blow your stupid kid brain out through your head, it was legitimately groundbreaking. Sure, maybe One-Winged Angel isn't the most sophisticated song ever written (Bach probably had something slightly better, maybe), and perhaps some PC games had Latin in them before Final Fantasy VII did, but this was a time when it wasn't absolutely - tediously - expected for your endgame to include epic chanting and dead language-resurrecting apotheosis on the part of the villain. It wasn't astonishing because I was twelve, it was astonishing because they were doing something unparalleled in scope, mood, and production. It was iconic, and it couldn't have been achieved but for that music.

 

You basically described my experience of fighting Kefka and hearing Dancing Mad for the first time, but replace orchestra with synth pipe organ and split it into four movements.

 

 

There isn't technically Latin chanting in the game version for technological reasons, but come on. Just listen to the thing. The Latin is there in spirit. 4 movements of a single song for 4 different phases of a boss fight, all distinct from each other but cogent as a single work separate from the rest of the game (aside from a few leitmotifs).

 

Also, I see someone mentioned it in passing earlier, but if you wanna talk about groundbreaking (or maybe just stupid? or bizarre?), how about making the player participate in an opera when the technology you're using isn't even sophisticated enough for your music to include lyrics? I have no idea why this appealed to me so much since I was like 8 or 9 when I first played the game (I guess I've just always been a pretentious asshole), but it hit me super hard back when I played the game, even if I'm not sure I completely understood what was going on?

 

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Thanks for reminding me to install Dominique Pamplemousse (another victim of Steam sales backlog).

 

I loved the Riot Grrrl tracks in Gone Home, they were such a big tonal shift from the melancholic ambient music that plays as you explore. It is quite a comforting reprive from the spookiness and sadness of the house when you come across a tape and start head banging with the mouse.

 

 

Also in The Last of Us: Left Behind, there is a scene that uses the Etta James track "I Got You Babe" with great effect. It's another example of what a well placed tonal shift, or a juxtaposition between audio and visual (in the following scene), can achieve.

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This was a fantastic use of music, the first time you enter Mexico it happens, I think they made sure no AI would spawn either too keep the experience controlled. I'm sad that its really the only moment of RDR that had inspired sound design:

 

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As Sean mentioned in the most recent Thumbs episode, Payday 2 has done most of its promotional and in-game cinematics as live action FMVs, which include a bevy of genre-spanning original music. I included The Dentist trailer in an earlier post because it begins with a wonderfully cut reintroduction to Dallas set to the country track Drifting. This week was large one in Payday 2, marking the third anniversary of the franchise itself and concluding a series of small updates with the release of the Hoxton Breakout Heist, in which the crew helps one of the player characters from the first game escape from jail. Much like The Dentist's, the full

trailer's first minute (of ten) teases a new original song, revealed in full to be the awesome and evocative soul song, This is Our Time. Say what you will about how cheap their cinematics end up looking once the firefights begin; their need of a more merciless editor or how gauche the original Payday 2 webseries was, but those first minutes absolutely build a mood. I've been listening to This is Our Time a lot for the past day or so, and it's all the better for its association with Hoxton's triumphant liberation.

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Jake "virt" Kaufman seems to love including vocal tracks in games he's scored. They are often sung by WayForward employees, which is pretty adorable. The entire Double Dragon Neon OST is peppered with vocals, but the ending is probably the grandest example:

 

 

Mighty Switch Force 2, another WayForward game, also features a sung credits song, though it doesn't play much of a narrative role. Then there's Cursed Dawn from Bloodrayne: Betrayal, several songs from Adventure Time: Hey Ice King! Why'd You Steal Our Garbage?!! and lastly (that I know of) the forthcoming Shantae: Half Genie Hero, which is slated to have at least

.

 

KOZILEK & doseone crafted

that alludes to the title and objective of the game. It's a sequel of sorts to
. The rest of the GUN GODZ soundtrack (available here) incorporates indecipherable Venusian rapping, but I feel that falls outside the scope of this thread, with the possible exception of Phonecall.

 

Doseone was also responsible for the Samurai Gunn soundtrack. His EP release features rapping on several tracks, but I believe the game uses the instrumentals with the exception of

. Beyond Good and Evil
.

 

Laura Shigihara contributed

. I haven't listened to it, as I have yet to play that game. She also used vocals in Plants vs. Zombies in credits, in both Japanese and English:

 

 

The World Ends With You is filled with vocal tracks, though I don't think they relate to the story directly.

.

 

Going back a bit further, two adventure games I fondly recall from my childhood open with vocal songs about death. The 11th Hour, the sequel to The 7th Guest is the first, opening with a song called

. The other is Discworld 2, which features this original number sung by Eric Idle:

 

 

Conker's Bad Fur Day features this somewhat scandalous sung scatological sequence:

 

 

Newer entries in the Sonic franchise include a bunch of vocal songs of varying awfulness levels. Sonic Unleashed has

, Sonic Colors has
, Sonic and the Secret Rings has
, Sonic R has too many to single one track out,
.

 

Sonic Adventure 2 features such gems as

,
,
,
,
, and
. As an aside, if you like any of these (especially the last one) you might enjoy
, provided you feel like listening to 12 minutes of graphic Sonic smut.

 

Elsewhere in Sega land, Burning Rangers features a vocal song (

and English available). Clockwork Knight has
, and its sequel
.

 

Lastly, I feel I would be remiss in not mentioning You Have To Burn The Rope. It's a very short game, so anybody who hasn't heard its song should just play it.

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