Zelda BotW music topic (split from Game Sack topic)

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Alunissage
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Zelda BotW music topic (split from Game Sack topic)

Post by Alunissage »

Hey folks, just a quick request to not inadvertently (or, er, vertently) slip much in the way of spoilers for Zelda in. Spouse and I are still only about a quarter of the way through, despite putting many hours in.

That said, if you haven't played the game, the little piano licks won't make much sense to you. There is SO MUCH exploration in this game that having music playing all the time would be kind of weird -- not to mention that sound levels matter in this game, e.g., sneaking up on enemies, and it would seem odd to have music playing at the same time as the game is giving you a little graph showing how much noise Link is making from walking around. And a big part of the atmosphere of wandering around in this near-empty world is the sounds of wind and birds and water and so on... and, of course, the occasional clue that something is nearby that you might want to explore. The villages and stables do have background music; pretty much everything with an "inside" does. It's just the great outdoors that doesn't have much other than occasional piano bits. It's an interesting artistic choice, and I don't know that I think it was the best choice, but it's definitely understandable in context.

It's also a bit of a match to how some key Zelda themes are rendered primarily on piano, e.g., the fanfare when getting a heart container, or (equivalent of) a piece of heart, or a map. The Temple of Time music is extremely subtle, so much so that I had to point out that the theme was there to my husband, but it definitely IS there, just with highly nonstandard harmonies. It's a good choice to illustrate the desolation of this post-Ganon world. The cheerful bombast of the field music in Ocarina of Time or Link to the Past would be out of place here.

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Re: Lunar featured once again on Game Sack

Post by Kizyr »

Um, would it make sense to split off the discussion on BotW's music (or other characteristics) to another thread? I absolutely like the discussion on it, but if y'all want to continue then it'd be less cluttered to split the thread.

If so, Alun you can feel free to, or I can go ahead and do so (...when I'm not on mobile). KF
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Re: Lunar featured once again on Game Sack

Post by jay_are »

:mrgreen: kizyr, my apologies to get off topic enough that you want a new thread about it, though im happy to hear you at least WANT that thread! What Im about to type would fit in that thread, but the main reason I want to say it is to show how much Lunar Dragon Song shines to me next to supposed highly praised games.

Its just that see, I loved Zelda too much as a kid, I cant stand to see it kill itself like it does constantly.
See, Alun says that theres so much exploration in this game that it would be weird to have music: well, is Zelda even meant to have THAT huge amount of exploration? Not in my opinion. See, Nintendo made it clear: We want to break all Zelda traditions.

How would we feel if Lunar wanted to break all traditions and became a game about looking for things in nature based on sound and there was not a focus on funny NPCs anymore or the beautiful music of Lunar?
Game franchises can be sacred to me, and whoever wants to do something different should just call it something else.

That being said, listen to this:
https://youtu.be/qiJ6wWU8404

Nothing can justify putting this in a game of any standard, indie or not, open world or not.
Ever since I saw the first gameplay vids when this game was revealed with in-game footage, I immediately rage-quit because every combat sounded like that. It was more like this one I think though:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPmnSxpR4cs

Then there's this trash too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pdwh26cz3A

And as if it wasn't enough, I found others I hadn't heard yet while looking for this which are just as much generic stock-sounding trash:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiJLCEKoYUc

Blows my mind how so many people could hear those songs in the links I sent and have so much to say ... something has gone terribly wrong.
Not sure what else to add. I don't care for any of the reused songs that have been there since the dawn of time. People love atmosphere. Atmosphere music is cancerous to me as it can make me lose hope that there will be something fun in the end. I love melodies with energy and interesting notes sequences. I want a smaller world that has more substance. Our time in this world is precious, it's a shame to waste it on bland things, let alone extremes like these.
Oh, and I never dig movie or movie-like OSTs.

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Re: Zelda BotW music topic (split from Game Sack topic)

Post by Alunissage »

I really, really don't think you can make any statements about Nintendo "killing Zelda" without playing it. Sure, this game is different from previous ones. So was Ocarina. So was Phantom Hourglass. It's all right for each game to not be a clone. I was a little bothered by the music in Majora's Mask, but that didn't keep it from being a good game. Saying whether Zelda is even meant to have that much exploration is missing the point: THIS one is. And again, if you haven't played it, you're not likely to see the similarity between exploring that overworld and Zelda 1's, where there might be a secret anywhere.

And really, you don't have to call music you don't understand trash. You have different tastes; that's fine. You might enjoy the music to Hyrule Warriors, if you haven't played that. But could you refrain from insulting by proxy everyone who's enjoying this game that you haven't played?

N.b., I'm not checking the links you posted because you have no way of knowing whether you're posting something I'd consider a spoiler or not. But I can't figure out how anyone can justify putting that one thud thud thud track into EB and every game after that... and yet, they did.

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Re: Zelda BotW music topic (split from Game Sack topic)

Post by jay_are »

Alunissage wrote:I really, really don't think you can make any statements about Nintendo "killing Zelda" without playing it.
While this is true...
What if I play and finish it, and it turns out even worse than I thought?
I could come here with details explaining every thing I didn't like about BotW, but what will that change?
This is exactly what has been happening since Metroid Prime, Metroid Prime 2, Zelda Wind Waker, TP, PH, Spirit Tracks, SS...
Still basically no one understood my apparently unique taste. BotW has higher chances of turning out just as I expect it to be because it's now openly a very different game.

But yeah, I'll play it someday. I played Majora's Mask expecting the worst, and I was ready to tear it apart, and it DID have a very rough start, but it turned out to be my favorite 3D Zelda! That magic hasn't happened again, ever.

A Link Between Worlds is one of my top Zelda games, now THAT one has almost everything I wanted! But I kinda hate Nintendo here too...
Since the day a few screenshots were revealed for that game, I got mad at how rushed the graphics looked. It looked like a good game, but wasted graphics. It turned out to be so good! It's a shame that it looks how it looks.
A Link Between Worlds should have been the big Switch game, and Breath of the Wild should have been the 3DS game that they would only spend little time and budget with. :lol:
Alunissage wrote:And really, you don't have to call music you don't understand trash. You have different tastes; that's fine.
You know, this really made me think.
You're right, it's still music, how can properly done music be "wrong"?
And then it hit me:
Try bringing your history homework to your math class. Try getting points for that.
What? But the history homework is good! In fact, you probably did an excellent job that would have made your history teacher happy, but that's not the subject here. That's not what your math teacher asked for, and therefore, its useless. I asked for Zelda music. The game says Zelda on the front, and last I checked, this isn't even a spinoff. Actually, I asked for a Zelda game entirely :mrgreen:

I love Suikoden, but if I ask for Lunar 3 and I get Suikoden 3 with Lunar's name in the box and titlescreen, I'm gonna cry. Lunar would be dead right there, even if what we got was good.
MegaMan Legends on the other hand though, is one of the few examples I can name that changed everything WITHOUT killing the series.
It's a spinoff, and it's brilliant. Also, the main MegaMan games were getting releases alongside it. Whereas with Zelda, now we will probably never have real Zelda games anymore at least for a very long time.

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Re: Zelda BotW music topic (split from Game Sack topic)

Post by GhaleonOne »

Thing is, Lunar DID release a game where they changed a lot about the series that we love. It was called Dragon Song and it was panned by most reviewers.

That said, I remember reading interviews from Shigeru Miyamoto in the past that said much of his inspiration for Zelda is exploration. He said when he visits a new city, he just goes walking around exploring. It's the adventure of it. So to have such a massive world for exploring absolutely fits into the Zelda theme.

Thing is, I had a lot of reservations about the whole "open world" concept. I've always hated the idea. Mainly because I don't have time for it. And like you, I worried that too much of Zelda would be changed for the worse. But I've played through the entire game, minus the final boss and finishing all the shrines and secrets and stuff, and I've got to say, it's probably my favorite Zelda game ever.It DID take up too much of my time. I had a lot of work to get done in the past few weeks but couldn't put Zelda down long enough to work on some of it. That, to me, says how good it is. It's been a LONG time since a video game drew me in like that.
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Re: Zelda BotW music topic (split from Game Sack topic)

Post by jay_are »

GhaleonOne wrote:Thing is, Lunar DID release a game where they changed a lot about the series that we love. It was called Dragon Song and it was panned by most reviewers.
Trick facts!
Is Dragon Song disliked simply because it wasn't enough like Lunar? Fans noted it, yes, but what if Lunar Dragon Song had deeper / better gameplay than the Pokemon or Final Fantasy of the times? Imagine that it had been an addictive RPG that fans of the genre had when there were no other RPGs for DS. They wouldn't have destroyed it. Instead, it was Lunar DS that destroyed and punished everyone :lol:
Of course Breath of the Wild won't punish people because there are no such insane gameplay mechanics. If it had, you would indeed hear complaints about it suddenly being "not like Zelda" anymore. Nintendo can be dumb, but not to make BotW unplayable.

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Re: Zelda BotW music topic (split from Game Sack topic)

Post by Alunissage »

Dragon Song is disliked mainly because of gameplay issues. If those were mitigated we could have a better idea of how it stacks up to other Lunar games.

By the way, last night spouse and I finally got to the Death Mountain region of Zelda BotW and were enjoying the sparse piano version of Zelda 1's level 9 music. Spouse said something to the effect of that guy on LunarNet (meaning you, jay_are) really doesn't know what he's talking about. :lol:

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Re: Zelda BotW music topic (split from Game Sack topic)

Post by Alunissage »

I will say that there's one way BotW breaks from Zelda tradition that annoys me a great deal: it has voice acting. The occasional "Hey! Listen!" or "AAAAAAAAAHHHHH" in other games doesn't bother me, but I really deeply dislike having whole scenes voiced. Among other reasons, hearing different pronunciations for names I first encountered loooong before I knew anything of Japanese pronunciation is really jarring. And there's already text in at least three sizes and two shadings, so it's not like there isn't a way to convey emphasis in text. It's also a little weird because it's only a few scenes and a few characters that are voiced (Link is still completely silent, of course); it might be less jarring by now if the whole game were. But I dunno, because I'm just not finding the voicing up to current standards. Zelda, who you hear the most by far, is tolerable, though still a little jarring to me initially, but the others seem so out of place.

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