apparently "lo-fi hip-hop for study" style covers of shadowbringers songs is
an oddly fruitful niche subgenre?
https://youtu.be/mB0qToExuRI and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyupzA-JacA are both brilliant
the top comment of the second one sums it up as "Lo-Fi hip hop (Beats to Craft and Gather to)" which is fantastic
and there's even canon precedent https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcHjxOKN0Pk so i guess this bubble isn't entirely unexpected but y'know what? i can groove with it. jazz cover album when s-e #ffxiv
no seriously though, you know the jazz instrumental arrangement albums for phoenix wright games?
that but for ffxiv would be brilliant. i mean we already have The Primals jammin' away, somebody get Soken some jazz cigarettes and make it happen
@wigglytuffitout I would buy the shit out of that and I don't even play ff14
@InspectorCaracal honestly even if you don't play ffxiv, i commend its music to you, there is some seriously good shit in here
i feel like final fantasy as a series has traditionally been very music-strong but it's definitely an absolute delight, compared to my time playing WoW (where i can only list like one song as a real favourite i stop and listen to every time), SWTOR (good themes... taken directly from the movies)... in ffxiv i have trouble saying which song is my fav. THERE ARE SO MANY
@InspectorCaracal it's also fun because there's some brooooaaaaaad variety in genres. the primal fights/boss battles often are opportunities for them to go off the cuff and present something pretty different. pompous opera? whiny emo rock? chill hippie rave beats? hard metal? pop electronica? Those All Happen lmao
i saw a youtube video once theorizing as to why early video game music is more memorable, and i think ffxiv's music keeps that melody-heavy focus which means it's easy to remember -
@wigglytuffitout first game was gameboy advance so yah
@wigglytuffitout my entirely unsolicited take:
modern video game music is composed like movie soundtracks: it's meant to evoke ambiance and not override the voice work, a.k.a. not draw attention to itself
old video games were like, ONLY music, so they were written to be the focus.
@InspectorCaracal honestly i think that's a huge part of it too!!
i wish i could remember where the fucken video was or who did it, but i think that memorable video game music really did hit that sweet spot of "we have to work within our technical limitations very hard, and that has meant that we accidentally did some kickass shit". it makes a lot of sense too, especially when these are early systems where there's like... a very small window into the video game, instead of an immersive world?
@wigglytuffitout YEAH. That's also why I love pixel art actually, I feel like technical limitations encourage creativity in a way that "creative freedom" really doesn't
@InspectorCaracal that second part may not make a lot of sense, but it feels like idk a gameboy game is set up to be a lot more of a gilded jewel than call of whatevertyfuck duty, simply by design.
that gameboy's going to really bring its limited music out because it knows things are happening around it and it wants your attention.
the game on your tv screen that expects to use things like surround sound wants you to come to it, and it doesn't have to come to you, so to speak.
@InspectorCaracal and both types are fun in their different ways! but it's a whole fascinating confluence of how it gets remembered.
like i love dishonored, i think it was a game that did a fantastic job of creating atmosphere. but i can't hum that atmosphere for you. i can hum the pokemon center theme on the spot though LOL
maybe the "graphics too crap for first-person to be believable so we're going third-person" nature of early games also comes into it? 🤔
@wigglytuffitout i feel like comparing a gameboy game to a AAA western game is sort of like comparing apples to a cheap print of a raisin
@InspectorCaracal ok yeah that's valid, especially when looking at the shallow puddles that are things like the call of duty franchise lmfao
it's interesting though to see this shift happening within a series, too. like, i've never played a metal gear solid game, but i could probably due 'snake eater' on karaoke if you got me drunk enough. but mgs5? metal gear rising? NO idea what a theme from those are. the only music i know from them was done by regular pop artists and referenced in-world.
@InspectorCaracal -and presumably it makes it much easier to do different covers, because people are expecting that distinctive melody instead of something much more nebulous. same reason why the ace atty jazz covers worked so good, too - the music has one foot in that oldschool melody-heavy video game soundtrack sentiment, due to design limitations. (i forget if the first game was old enough that it was basically midis or not but like, close enough, not able to do full-sound mp3s constantly.)