Zelda BotW music topic (split from Game Sack topic)
Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2017 11:42 pm
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.
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.