Final Fantasy Music: The Heir to Uematsu's Throne

Posted on Thursday, May 3 @ 07:09:55 Eastern by Heath_Hindman

I don't always listen to game music, but when I do, I prefer these two guys most people don't know.

Game music composer Nobuo Uematsu is a legend of his craft and played an undeniable part in Final Fantasy's early success. Some of the warmest, fuzziest bits of nostalgia we have about FF's golden days are tracks like "Matoya's Cave", "Terra's Theme", "You Are Not Alone "Theme of Love", "The Other Side of the Mountain", and countless others (shed your nostalgia in the comments). Faced with limited game console technology for most of his career, the man had to focus on memorable melodies to help set the mood, and he did a heck of a job

Uematsu not being a Final Fantasy mainstay for these past several years has been sad for the series, not just because it misses his masterful compositions, but because the series needs a go-to guy for its music. I believe one small step (among many needed) toward Final Fantasy getting back to banging out the hits like it used to would be to have a dedicated music man on the team, in the same way Uematsu was the obvious choice for well over a decade. While Hitoshi Sakimoto did a decent job with FFXII and Masashi Hamazu deserves a tip of the hat for a good effort in FFXIII, they lack the power of so many other FF soundtracks.

I submit to you my two considerations for the heir to Mr. Uematsu's throne. One of these two awesome composers should be Final Fantasy's new music master. First up, meet Keiichi Okabe. He's this guy:

Look at him. This photo was taken after he executed everyone else in the room. Keiichi already has experience working on Square-published RPGs, as he did the soundtracks for Lord of Apocalypse and Nier. Cavia, the studio that developed the latter, no longer exists, so this free agent is a perfect, easy pickup for Square Enix. Cut this man a fat paycheck and let him give you soundtrack bliss, Square.

If there's a strike against Okabe, it's that his history of being radtastic doesn't stretch back through his whole career, as he tend to do some one-off tracks for random games that can be hit or miss. There were bright spots in it, though. Moreover, I find the second better than the first, and the man's work in general is constantly getting better. He might just be worth giving a shot at Final Fantasy.

Let's begin by sampling his best work, the Nier soundtrack:

Nier: Kaine ~ Salvation - More like the salvation of my playlist from bad tracks.
Nier: Emil ~ Karma - Battle music for people who like battle music.
Nier: Ashes of Dreams - Available in 4 languages, this dark vocal theme perfectly captures the grim mood of its game.

That whole soundtrack is dynamite. Okabe's other stuff isn't quite Nier level, and his most recent Lord of Apocalypse is loaded with ups and downs. It is for this reason that Okabe is not a shoe-in for this job. Say hello to perhaps a stronger candidate, Takeharu Ishimoto.

Ishimoto has two Final Fantasy spinoff soundtracks to his credit, Crisis Core and Type-0, both of which are among my top five favorite game soundtracks.

In my kickass Final Fantasy Type-0 review, I said, "If I were Johnny Depp and this were Once Upon a Time in Mexico, I would shoot a composer for making something this great." I invaded places to the tune of "Sacred Fire" and punched faces in time with "Three Hours of Fate". Hardly a moment passed by in which I was not appreciating the music of Type-0, and the same can be said of Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII.

To be fair, a lot of great tracks in Crisis Core were remixes of Uematsu's top-notch work on the Final Fantasy VII soundtrack, but the original stuff was also very well done. In both CC:FFVII and FFT0, Ishimoto uses a mix of instruments and styles blended wonderfully. Check out a few solid tracks from the Crisis Core OST:

Crisis Core: The Burdened - How great is that violin right there?
Crisis Core: Under the Apple Tree - Like who wouldn't join S.O.L.D.I.E.R. if this played while the recruiter spoke?
Crisis Core: The Price of Freedom - Functions as Crisis Core's main theme, hell of a song.
Crisis Core: Fulfilled Desire - An FFVII Main Theme Remix.
Crisis Core: A Flower Blooming in the Slums - An FFVII Aeris Theme Remix

I could go on and on with these two games. Ishimoto has also done interesting things for Dissidia, The World Ends With You, and chunks of the Kingdom Hearts series that include Birth by Sleep and Dream Drop Distance. This guy's already cranking out the hits for Square, but hardly anyone knows his name. I think he's ready to be right in the spotlight as the official composer for numbered Final Fantasy titles from here on out. Maybe he could do most of the battles and serious story moments songs while Okabe handles mostly field, dungeon, and town themes? I think it could be a winning combination.

Square, give Ishimoto or Okabe the music responsibilities of the Final Fantasy series. Let's do this.

Related Games: Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, NIER

Tags: Most Interesting Gamer In The World

Comments

MasterRabbi
Joined: May 2007

Posted: May 3rd, 2012 at 12:27 pm
Some good picks there. I do think a steady composer would go a long way to bringing FF back. And releasing Type-0 in America... I want it!

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DrToasty
Joined: Dec 2005

Posted: May 3rd, 2012 at 1:05 pm
As a graduate student for sound design (which very much covers the video game industry), I feel as if I might have a few insights, not many.
There is a growing trend in the industry towards contract work for composers, as opposed to having a resident songstress. The reasons for this are many, but I am willing to take a stab at a few:
1) For larger companies that might be juggling/overlapping various IPs, it can be tricky to, and more expensive to have one composer for all of their projects (especially if the composer has some agreement about royalties and rights to the score).
2) For smaller companies that have less certainty about their futures, my previous point becomes even more poignant as it becomes financially unpalatable to keep someone on-staff, preferring to just pay someone a lump sum and hire someone new next time.

That being said,
Holla atcha Boi, RICHMOND CA 4 LYFE.
Or, faretheewell fair citizens, you were a scholar and gentlemanz...

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DrToasty
Joined: Dec 2005

Posted: May 9th, 2012 at 10:31 am
Oh, side tangent. Last night I met Clint Bajakian, you know, a head honcho over in the sound department at sony? A gentleman and a scholar, to be sure. He mentioned, as I suspected, that it can take months even before projects really start rolling to get a composer on board due to contracts and so forth. He mentioned that large companies (like sony), have a large staff of editors and producers, and often will hire composers who may or may not have worked on games before. He mentioned that occasionally they will hire the same person twice, or never again, or who knows.

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blake_peterson
Joined: Oct 2011

Posted: May 3rd, 2012 at 11:53 pm
I caution you not to judge a composer by their core Final Fantasy soundtrack. Hamauzu and Sakimoto are actually really great, doing anything but a core Final Fantasy soundtrack.

Sakimoto's work shines incredibly bright in stuff like FF Tactics, Vagrant Story, and especially all three Valkyria Chronicles games. On FFXII I was like, why are they holding this guy's hand? Let him do his awesome fanfares and marches.

As for Hamauzu, his symphonic soundscapes blew me away with Dirge of Cerberus. Listening to FFXIII OST, I was like, wait, what happened? His Sigma Harmonics soundtrack (for a DS game, no less) is like a better version of the FFXIII soundtrack.

I suspect though, that working on a numbered Final Fantasy game is like a trial by committee, every piece of creativity is slowly dissected and carefully removed. I suspect that the same thing will happen if your fave's get picked for a numbered game as well.

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Heath_Hindman
Joined: May 2011

Posted: May 4th, 2012 at 1:47 am
I should add that yeah, as s huge game music fan, I am familiar with Sakimoto's and Hamauzu's various other works. Sakimoto is like, the go-to guy for stories involving large-scale wars in my opinion. He writes that stuff so well. Hamauzu is a hell of a guy, but yeah, like you said, his FF stuff just didn't do it for me. A lot of it I found passable in the game, but very little that I remember outside of it.

Thanks for the comment :D

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Bras
Joined: Jul 2008

Posted: May 4th, 2012 at 6:22 am
Thanks for the music, have you listened to the Dark Souls soundtrack?

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Heath_Hindman
Joined: May 2011

Posted: May 4th, 2012 at 8:05 pm
I sadly have not. If that's a recommendation, I'll get right on it. (I've been waiting on playing that till I play Demon's Souls and have not been in a hurry to check their musical scores. They good?)

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