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    Soken on Heavensward music and creating the OST - Famitsu translation

    Here’s an interview that Famitsu did with Soken about a month ago regarding the upcoming release of the Heavensward OST on Bluray. Part of the interview was released in a Famitsu publication and the full interview was published January 29 on their website.

    There’s nothing forward-looking here, so no hints about 3.2 music or beyond. It’s all about the music in 3.0 and 3.1, with some interesting discussion about how some of the tracks developed and the reception to them.

    On a tangentially related note, for anyone who plays piano and/or might be interested in such things, I recently did a transcription of the piano score for the night theme in Coerthas Western Highlands, so I'll see if I can upload it or put up a link to that this evening. Not sure if I'll ever get around to doing any of the others, maybe one day.

    Source: http://www.famitsu.com/news/201601/29098218.html

    -----

    FFXIV sound designer Masayoshi Soken talks about sound production and the upcoming soundtrack release for "Heavensward"

    We had the opportunity to speak with Masayoshi Soken, lead sound designer on FFXIV, regarding the latest soundtrack of recordings from Heavensward, "Final Fantasy XIV Heavensward Original Soundtrack," which will be released on February 24. This interview is the full version of the conversation extended from the interview that was published in the January 21 edition of Weekly Famitsu 2016. Since this is quite lengthy, please read it thoroughly when you have some time. (Held January 4, 2016)


    The themes of the Dragonsong War were an unprecedented amount of work.

    What original concepts did you include in the music production for Heavensward?

    Soken: For "A Realm Reborn," the whole team put an emphasis on a feeling of righteousness. For Heavensward, the basis of the story was the Dragonsong War. Since they have a much longer lifespan than humans, we talked about creating heavier themes.

    Life and death are involved.

    Soken: We wanted to express a feeling of getting even. Language isn't good enough for this and it couldn't be expressed well with words, but through the music I think we were able to get across what we wanted to say.

    Did you read the plot or look at the game's visuals while working?

    Soken: Actually, the music and visuals were developed pretty much at the same time. Since we had only decided the roots of the story, I just got a general description from Yoshida.

    Did you get any overall orders?

    Soken: Occasionally I heard that the aim was a dark fantasy. But then, a little different from a typical dark fantasy, with a certain weight to it. It was challenging.

    You didn't have any sample to go by?

    Soken: Right. When I first get orders from Yoshi-P, he'll usually say it'll be "roughly like this," and there will be some videos and other materials that serve as guidelines. But this time there was no specific documentation for the world and no plot. So it was left up to me and my own interpretation.

    Did you struggle with it?

    Soken: There was no time to struggle. (laughs)

    (Laughs) If you had any time to worry you would still have had to keep working.

    Soken: There were really no breaks at all. Around the 2015 new year I was working on the "Before the Fall" original soundtrack, and we had the Fan Festival in Tokyo with the deadline date for patch 2.5 on the following day. Then, the Gold Saucer deadline was only shortly after the new year. There was quite a bit of overlap (laughs).

    And on top of all that you were getting ready for production of Heavensward.

    Soken: We performed the "Titan" song at Fan Festival, and then I ran back to the development room.... With all the work going on, the rest of the sound staff was saying "Fan Festival? What's that?"

    So you weren't even able to enjoy the praise.

    Soken: I didn't even have time to take a bath, I ran in sweaty and panting "are we OK? still have time?..." It was tiring. The austerity you see in Heavensward isn't really reflected in the atmosphere of the development offices. (laughs)


    "Heavensward" and "Dragonsong"

    Players first heard the song "Heavensward" when we saw the teaser trailer for Heavensward.

    Soken: Before the Fan Festival began, we rushed to make the teaser movie. Then, when we were just formally starting work on making the opening movie, I remember that Yoshi-P surprised me by suddenly by asking us to somehow include the song from the opening movie. We were so busy with all of the work that I tried to avoid it because we were nowhere near finished.

    So it's not common practice to make something like that so far in advance?

    Soken: It was unheard of (laughs). I've been involved with game development for about 20 years and I've never had a schedule like that. The intent was for it to be the world debut so we needed to record the full orchestra which takes a lot of time and my first answer was "we'll never get it done in time." In order to help out, we called out to a bunch of different people and we revealed to them how quickly we needed it recorded. We got a range of responses from "Huh?!" or "how long is it?" to "do you have the score?" or "let's do it!" (laughs)

    Sound Team PR Staff: We have an old video that we recorded that we included as a bonus on the soundtrack where Soken has a face like he was dying.

    Soken: (Watching the video) This was that orchestra recording that lasted until midnight. But all of the performers were pretty excited. Even though the train had stopped running, we still hadn't gotten a decent recording. I didn't really have a good excuse, but I told them "I'd be really grateful if you could stick around for another couple of rounds," and they all said "let's go, let's do it!" All of the performers seemed to feel the same and they were willing. The first goal was to make the teaser movie, so my aim was just to get through that. Players may have thought that we made the teaser by pulling out parts from the opening movie, but it was all reworked (laughs).

    Did you have different ideas for the lyrics and the singer for "Heavensward"?

    Soken: For the song, I left the lyrics to Koji (Square Enix translator and localization lead Michael Christopher Koji Fox). As far as the singer goes, since the song has a wide vocal range, the amount of people who could sing it are quite limited so we had to meet that condition. We used Omega to look internationally.

    The higher key of the melody leaves quite an impression.

    Soken: We were in a hurry for the teaser movie so we recorded it as soon as we could. Also we included just one verse of it which came to an end pretty quickly. We had other lyrics written, but with the additional verses Omega told us that would be kind of unreasonable to get done. With the singing part limited to a short duration the recording took about two or three hours and we had to do our best with that.

    What kind of exchange did you have with Nobuo Uematsu about "Dragonsong"?

    Soken: Once we started talking about the work for the expansion pack, Yoshi-P was thinking about giving a song to Uematsu. I talked through the theme of the song and some of the details with him when I went to Hiroyuki Nakayama's PIANO OPERA music from FINAL FANTASY concert in Sendai in June 2014. In the dressing room, I told him we were planning an expansion pack and begged him to get involved and he said yes (laughs). He told me he wanted to make a new song.

    So he agreed quickly (laughs). Did you entrust everything to Uematsu?

    Soken: Yeah. Of course, we shared with him the story of the Dragonsong War. Our idea was that Uematsu's song would be from the dragons' point of view, and mine would be from the players'.

    That's a different perspective on the themes.

    Soken: For cutscenes involving the dragon side, we used arrangements of "Dragonsong," and the human side uses arrangements of "Heavensward."

    That might be pretty interesting to listen to again carefully on the soundtrack.

    Soken: I should write that in the liner notes (laughs).



    What new challenges did 3.0 present?

    Soken: As a multi-platform MMORPG I think we've pretty much exhausted the list of things we can do with sound from a technical perspective, but in the sense of the music itself being a challenge, I incorporated some unfamiliar genres in songs like the The Great Gubal Library and Alexander.

    The Gubal song was pretty surprising. The expressions and pitch of the piano are all over the place.

    Soken: We made that song with two upright pianos played with an offset rhythm. One was played live and one was programmed. We made adjustments later to give it a jazzy feel.

    That's an interesting way to create the sound.

    Soken: Since it's a dungeon, we wanted it to feel a little spooky. For Alexander, the orders that we got were for something unlike what we've heard before and something from a steampunk world so that took trial and error to put together. We didn't want to detract too much from the world unity and have it fit within the overall atmosphere of FFXIV so it took us a while to settle on something.

    You used a vocoder as well.

    Soken: Yeah, the singing voice was processed through a vocoder to sound electronic.

    For Alexander, why did you use a different song for the fourth battle than for the first through third?

    Soken: I didn't initially plan to use a different song for the fourth but I thought it would be cool to elevate the last battle so I started working on it in secret every night. When Maehiro (Kazutoyo, main scenario writer) heard it, he told me "this is the fourth battle." (laughs)

    So that came along nicely.

    Soken: We had so little production time to begin with that we said we wanted to just try to make one quality song. I had already seen on the production schedule that the next edition would be implemented in patch 3.2. I was surprised at how tight the schedule was (laughs). For that amount of time I said I guess this will be a stock song, but Maehiro and I were worried about how players would take that. We were thinking players might be thinking "ugh" by the time they get to the fourth battle (laughs). I thought about it overnight and when we met up the next day and we were deciding what we should do, we both said let's not be stingy.

    It's also good if you make more.

    Soken: From the player side, hopefully the song gives a different feel, something a little more dangerous, and inspires them to take on the challenge.

    What did Yoshi-P say about adding more songs on your own?

    Soken: We got a fairly detailed list about the total number of songs we wanted and the timing for Heavensward. We had to push back because of the amount that was requested for the short time we had. Because of the demanding schedule, when I saw the first purchase order that Maehiro and Yoshi-P put together I told them I would not be able to keep the quality up. Eventually they returned with a realistic number but that list grew over time.

    I guess it was a lot of work.

    Soken: It was a little less difficult because we were able to be more efficient by rearranging songs. Every new list that got passed along gave me heartburn, though, and by the end when I saw the number of songs, I wondered how I got through that alive (laughs).

    I guess the original number was frightening.

    Soken: Some of the songs we intended to use in certain places didn't work out as well as we expected. In the end, the number of songs we wound up making was actually almost the same as the first order (laughs).

    (Laughs) How many songs did you end up with?

    Soken: Patch 3.0 had 50 songs and we added eight in patch 3.1, so a total of 58 songs.

    That's more songs than you'd find in most entire games.

    Soken: That's true, isn't it? It's the amount that you'd take at least two or three years to make if you were producing an AAA title. It came down to me to keep driving on, so thinking back on the whole thing it was just about staying focused. In the 2.0 series there were the three city-states and they had theme-park like elements, but this time there was just one principal nation that served as the backbone of the story. So I think it has more of a solid RPG feel to it.



    Some background on the production of popular songs

    Personally, I really like the song of Fractal Continuum more than the Neverreap one...when I do Duty Roulette, before I know which area was selected I'm thinking "come on Fractal!"

    Soken: I also wrote a comment about that on the soundtrack (laughs). Aren't those tornados in Neverreap annoying? It doesn't change the play time that much, but it does feel like you missed out. When I'm typing out greetings and "nice to meet you" and I begin to hear the Fractal song, I think "all right!" (laughs)

    I haven't done expert roulette recently though, but I've been focused on doing the level 50 and level 60 dungeon roulette's every day so I still go to dungeons.

    Soken: The Fractal dungeon had the provisional title "Infinite Gallery" during development. Production time was tight so we were considering having the same song play in the different dungeons, but we decided to make some sacrifices and squeeze in enough time to include an original song for each. Among those, I really wanted to make "Infinite Gallery" be likeable. The kinds of images we got for that dungeon were that it would be one you would go to after you hit level 60, separate from the story, with Allagan remnants around. I decided to create an upbeat song for players to go around the area.

    It worked out really well.

    Soken: Since that dungeon is in Azys Lla, it's an arrangement of the Azys Lla song.

    The field and dungeon songs share motifs.

    Soken: They are remixes but I think it can be difficult to notice unless you listen to them and compare.

    The fighting song for the third boss at the end of the dungeons is also great. It really builds the tension.

    Soken: That was a high priority song. Actually it was among the first we completed, it has some pretty cool ups and downs.

    Did you decide to include those ups and downs yourself?

    Soken:That's right. Without having a good arrangement and configuration of the musical instruments, the song won't be satisfying no matter how good the melody is. For example, a different bass line might have upset the whole thing.

    Also with the primal songs, Bismarck is popular.

    Soken: We changed the song around a bit for the cloud god Bismarck. Maehiro wasn't sure about the order. We were told it should have an awe-inspiring feeling because it's a primal, and be scary because Bismarck is so huge, and also be exhilirating because it's an aerial battle. How can we get all those things together (laughs)? Bismarck took the longest to produce of all the songs in Heavensward. The song from Alexander actually made use of one of the themes we dropped from there.

    You had said earlier it was reworked about 40 times.

    Soken: That sounds right. We had to try over and over again because we kept hearing "that's no good...." I chose parts of the song for Alexander from some of the versions that stuck out to me so I was able to find a new home for some of those remixed versions (laughs).

    Even though it's a cool song, it seems to be wasted on Bismarck since you don't fight him much outside of progressing through the game.

    Soken: Well, when the soundtrack comes out you can hear it there (laughs).

    I'll be happy to get to listen to my favorites whenever I want. Speaking of primals, we haven't talked about Ravana's song yet.

    Soken: Butterflies swooping down onto the stage where the samurai stands... it's not as hard to say it with kanji (laughs). The themes are kind of a waltz and a jidaigeki [[Edo period drama about samurai]] song. The first half is a waltz and the second half is the period drama music. The more dramatic tone seemed to be a hit with fans overseas (laughs). In Japan, we got more feedback that Bismarck was the best.

    So the popularity was split with fans overseas.

    Soken: I think people overseas saw him as a really cool samurai while people in Japan probably thought of him as a violent shogun (laughs).

    The battle song for Thordan left a different impression from the other primals.

    Soken: I finished the song for Thordan around the middle of development. I planned from the start to include an arrangement of "Heavensward."

    With that, you really feel that the boss battle is part of the storyline.

    Soken: As the last boss, we wanted people to think "oh, this is cool," even if they were really struggling with it. If you ask me specifically which elements are cool or uncool, I can't really answer that. Really it comes down to personal taste as far as which battle songs are cool or not.

    The extreme Thordan fight is a particularly flashy battle.

    Soken: It sort of feels like "finally, we're here" and "let's do it!" Somehow that seems to be a kind of situation that pops up often in FFXIV (laughs).

    Up until now you hadn't used different songs between the normal and extreme versions of primal battles.

    Soken: Ultimate End is a really cool technique. Its like will you get knocked back to the planet or confront him for Eorzea? Because of that, we really wanted to elevate the image of that fight. You're in the middle with the twelve knights all around and the music drops out and you hear a chorus. The normal Thordan battle song also comes in after Ultimate End which I think works well after having already completed the story.

    Tell us a bit about the extreme version.

    Soken: Well, the extreme version isn't the main version of the fight. However, since Ultimate End is an important technique, the sound planners as well as the scenario team had the same opinion to switch the song at that point. So my first idea was to bring in the existing Thordan song for the first half of the battle and then do a guitar arrangement for the second half, but that was refused (laughs). After that, I thought it would be better if the second half of the battle would stay as it is now as that shows the true strength of the the knights. So we brought the normal Thordan song back for the second half of the battle, and I made a different song for the first half.

    That kind of work took more effort but it definitely impacts the quality.

    Soken: Yeah, for the knights battle we did have that kind of commitment.

    Do you struggle with the arrangements of existing songs like Matoya's Cave or Gold Saucer?

    Soken: I don't find it very hard since I'm a gamer myself. The musical instruments and the instruments from the orchestra are also pretty much set so that's not much of a problem either. By sticking with this for most songs, we can maintain a common "FFXIV sound." So when we say we're adding Gold Saucer to FFXIV and deciding which instruments we should use, we can figure it out pretty quickly. Of course, taking the song to a finished state can be difficult. I think that's more the case when we're arranging old songs than creating new ones from scratch.



    Comments from Soken

    The soundtrack for Heavensward will finally be on sale soon.

    Soken: It feels so quick. But we released Heavensward on June 23, 2015, and the soundtrack is releasing on February 24, 2016.... We really did the best we could to get it out as fast as possible. I'm sorry to have kept you waiting.

    I think you met the demand of the fans by releasing some of the music earlier.

    Soken: Because the production work on the soundtracks takes a long time, we asked the fans which songs they wanted to hear sooner and answered those requests. I was surprised that the Alexander song wasn't selected. Even though we had three different opportunities, the Alexander song and the Ravana song didn't get chosen. I wonder if it's because their time has passed....

    I think that may be part of it. Also, maybe Alexander wasn't chosen because there are a lot of people already listening to it every day? (laughs)

    Soken: Yeah. After hearing the coil songs for long enough, I thought "man, I really don't want to hear this anymore." When I hear the music now from Binding Coil it reminds me of that torture.

    (Looking at the sample disk) Your comments include some commentary on the songs - did you show any of the tension like you did last tiem?

    Soken: Yeah (laughs). This time I also included emails and development notes from Minagawa (lead UI artist).

    That'll be new (laughs).

    Soken: For example, one of them was about the theme of the crystal that plays on the title screen. We originally thought we would never get to the point of mastering the songs with all the tracks we planned, so we had to reduce the number and planned to use the same title screen song as last time. But that gentle track really didn't fit the images with the snow and the dragon. Minagawa sent an email out saying "this bothers me" to a number of different people, but I knew it was directed entirely at me (laughs). So I replied that I'd make a song right away. There were some emails floating around that said "work fast!" but there aren't usually very many with praise, although Gondai (FFXIV battle director) did send a compliment. I was thinking "Gondai said I'm good at this!" (laughs)

    I see. Maybe he was trying to get you to make more songs (laughs).

    Soken: I have some more frank discussion on the soundtrack this time also. I'm not just talking about Void Ark, but I'm also talking about things like my workout! As we got to the last stages of the development, the sound team was really getting out of shape... we were just eating junk food and a lot of people were going to the dentist and had tooth decay. After the Heavensward development was finished, I had to start working out so I could get into better shape (laughs).

    So Void Ark is the workout song for the sound staff.

    Soken: In the comments for Dragonsong, we also revealed a bit about Uematsu's nature. I told everyone he doesn't act like a celebrity, he's more like a nice uncle.

    So you exposed him on the soundtrack (laughs).

    Soken: Yeah (laughs). We have some other things to look at as well besides comments. We have some nice screenshots included. Also, we had a big dispute over what order to put the songs in (laughs). For example, the night song for Foundation is placed after the Holy See battle theme, under the assumption that you'd find yourself listening to it back in Ishgard after you receive the so-called Lv56 shock [[I'm assuming he meant 57, but it said 56]]. Depending on whether you know the meaning, you may find that to be a little sad.

    So if you've already played it, it may be like reliving some of those game moments as you listen through the soundtrack.

    Soken: For the Thordan songs, we had to decide whether to put the songs together or have the normal earlier than the extreme. In the end, we decided that it would be best to stick with the game experience and just put the normal song. Should we put Alexander with Dravania Hinterlands? Or somewhere else? We couldn't figure out a good spot for those, so after some trouble we decided to put them at the end.


    No secret song this time around?

    It looks like the soundtrack is broken up into chapters like last time.

    Soken: Regarding the chapters, we divided up the field songs so they can be played day and night. Maybe you can listen to the night songs as you go to sleep (laughs). Also, you can ride between the chapters on various flying mounts.

    Oh, nice (viewing the operation of the soundtrack). It seems like you put a lot of work into this, even including the CG snow effect from the title screen.

    Soken: We also did our best to get good screenshots this time. We didn't just want to use random Heavensward graphics, the sound team spent a lot of time taking screenshots. For the field araes, we took screenshots throughout the day so the passage of time could be felt in the song. It was a lot of work.

    I would have gladly helped if I could.

    Soken: I thought about maybe begging Famitsu for help (laughs). Oh, for instance, this is my character.

    Is that okay? You sure you want to reveal that?

    Soken: You can't really recognize the race from the way it was taken so I thought it would be okay to include. However, we aren't playing through the dungeons normally when we take those screenshots. So we took the sound team to the development server for those. I think we took about half on public servers and half on the development server.

    So you took them with all players around?

    Soken: We took them with the normal crowds around so the environments would look familiar to players. That doesn't mean I'm in them.

    If people saw you they would start looking for you (laughs).

    Soken: Last time, we had a bit of a fail when we were trying to take images of Crystal Tower. I wanted to get images of 24 people going through the tower, so I tried it with some staff members. I wasn't really thinking about it and I went in on monk. People started to run out of patience when they saw the monk was standing around with the casters (laughs).

    I guess you turned off the UI and were trying to get a good angle. Maybe you would have gotten through it without suspicion if you were on white mage.

    Soken: The alliance members were a bit concerned about it. I didn't want to have to apologize to anyone this time, so we used the development server. In other words, what you see in the dungeon screenshots are our debug characters.

    You'll also be including MP3s so that I can listen on my smartphone?

    Soken: Of course. In addition to that, we have the full Heavensward trailer in both 2ch and 5.1ch sound and this time we also got to include some scenes of our everyday work. It's rare that we get a peaceful day to shoot any video. Things always seem to get busier and busier, but we did have a chance right after the deadline was extended. The videos also include some scenes of the orchestra. Both the videos together are about 10 minutes total. Heavensward was recorded with a full orchestra and for this soundtrack we also included "A New Hope" (the Ul'dah daytime song) and "Torn from the Heavens" (the FATE song).

    The orchestra version of Heavensward can be viewed in 5.1ch A and B, what's the difference?

    Soken: A is a normal surround mix, B is more of a crazy arrangement. For example, in the Ul'dah song, it starts with a timpani roll, and on B it sounds like it's orbiting around your head. So make sure you're in good health before you listen to B (laughs). This is just a small detail, but you can also switch the Twitter display between Japanese and English. I don't know how many people will really bother (laughs).

    Can you promise any secrets?

    Soken: I think we might stop doing that. We thought it would be fun to include a little secret for entertainment but we saw feedback in product reviews that we shouldn't do that, so we thought it would be better to leave it out.

    I'd be happier if you'd include it!

    Sound PR Staff: Also, our user support team said we have to put how to download the secret songs on our official website.

    Well, I guess it's not really a secret then (laughs). And if you keep including secret tracks then eventually you'll get a ton of feedback "why is there no secret?!"

    Soken: It might be easier if there was more of that kind of feedback. We've already had a few releases and decided this time it would be better go without it. Since the disk has good sound quality, I hope you enjoy the quality of the songs.



    Soken may come to your city

    For launch, there are going to be seven in-store events in cities around the country.

    Soken: We're starting with Shinjuku, Tokyo on February 24, Nagoya on the 25th, Osaka on the 26th, Fukuoka on the 27th, Yokohama on the 28th, then Sendai on March 5 and Sapporo on March 6, so it's going to be seven locations. When I first heard the schedule I was like "what?!"

    Your schedule will be packed (laughs).

    Soken: Last time we did an in-store event in Hakata, I didn't even get to breathe in the Hakata air!

    What do you mean?

    Soken: Hakata is two stops on the subway from Fukuoka Airport. We were saying Fukuoka had good access and while we were talking after getting off the subway, I asked the staff "where's the venue?" and they said it's in the station building. So I went up the elevator to the event and as soon as that was over, I was told that if I didn't leave for Osaka I wouldn't make it in time for the next event. So I asked "how are we getting there?" and I was told by shinkansen [[bullet train]]. Because we were at the station building, the shinkansen stops right there. While I was riding on the shinkansen, I realized around Hiroshima that I didn't even get to go outside in Hakata!

    So you were under fluorescent lamps the whole time? (laughs)

    Soken: That doesn't change when I'm at Higashi Shinjuku (location of Square Enix) either. So this time, I'll go out into Hakata!

    Sound PR Staff: We may have to travel at night after the Hakata event....

    Soken: Well, I hope I have some time to get some air?! Also to eat something.

    Maybe you can pack a meal for the train ride....

    Soken: If it's like that, I'm dreading it already.

    You also went to the last PAX in Seattle.

    Soken: Yeah. I think we did an in-store event on Saturday evening and we had hardly any time afterwards because we had to leave for Seattle (laughs).

    Hopefully you have a little more breathing room.

    Soken: It's already a mess. I think the staff finds it funny. They were laughing about the trip from Nagoya to Seattle and the stress was making me gag. Anyway, since we're doing a lot of local events this time, if there's one near you and you have time, please come check it out.

    For sure!

  2. #2
    Sea Torques
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    Soken is really fucking amazing.

    I'm amused that he worked on Metal in secret in his private time.

    Also even the devs hate Alwaysreap.

  3. #3
    Sandworm Swallows
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    Soken is the true hero of XIV.
    Thanks Slycer :D

  4. #4
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    For anyone interested, here's my transcription of the piano score for Coerthas Western Highlands at night (called Black and White on the soundtrack). I did this for myself so I may or may not ever do the other nighttime piano themes for the field areas, but I figured others might be interested so I uploaded it here. I guess BG Box requires files to be zipped so this is just the one PDF in a ZIP file. If you're actually a pianist and try it out, let me know if any of my notation seems wonky... I played through it a couple times and it sounded right to me.

    https://files.bluegartr.com/a6742288...6e4a0d969b.zip

  5. #5
    The Defense is ready, Your Honor
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    Soken is good people. I greatly enjoyed the sweeping majority of all Heavensward songs, and finally, a standard battle theme that isn't annoying. I detested the 2.0 field battle song, but unf, that 3.0.

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lujei View Post
    Soken is really fucking amazing.

    I'm amused that he worked on Metal in secret in his private time.

    Also even the devs hate Alwaysreap.
    I still think his work is inferior to what what we had in FFXI, he is getting better though. I think it's partly not his fault though because in FFXIV you are less likely to stay in any one area for a long period of time.

  7. #7
    Lostbane
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    Thanks for the translation again Slycer

  8. #8
    Sandworm Swallows
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    Quote Originally Posted by Alisha View Post
    I still think his work is inferior to what what we had in FFXI, he is getting better though. I think it's partly not his fault though because in FFXIV you are less likely to stay in any one area for a long period of time.
    Matter of opinion. I think they're equally good. Soken has made some fantastic vocal tracks the like and genre of which we could never have in XI, such as Alexander4 and Titan. On the other hand, the XI composers seem to have had a really strong Celtic influence that I truly enjoyed. Soken can write more complex music, but XI's tracks often had a soothing simplicity and a more natural sound. I really don't think one is greater than the other at this point.

  9. #9
    Physicist
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    I can't wait to get the OST for 14 to compare.

    I loved the music for 11 in-game, but then getting the actual CD (was a Japanese import copy in those days) with the orchestral music took that to another level. I haven't played 11 in years, but I still have Zitah, Selbina, and a few others in my favorite playlists.

  10. #10
    Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain
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    Poor Naoshi Mizuta... still not getting any recognition for doing most of FFXI's OST after Nobuo Uematsu threw a tantrum (yet again) for not wanting to do the OST of an MMO game.

    I'm glad SE has other awesome composers beside Nobuo Uematsu.

  11. #11
    Sandworm Swallows
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    I know Mizuta is XI's main composer but some others also have credits on XI so I chose to label it 'XI composers'. But gotta say I feel bad for him too. Deserves more recognition.

  12. #12
    Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain
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    Quote Originally Posted by Silenka View Post
    I know Mizuta is XI's main composer but some others also have credits on XI so I chose to label it 'XI composers'. But gotta say I feel bad for him too. Deserves more recognition.
    Well he did some of XIV 1.0 OST... oh wait...

  13. #13
    Sandworm Swallows
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    Did he? I didn't play 1.0

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    he composed the Maelstrom theme (Maelstrom Command) and the Kobold Stronghold theme (Quick as Silver, Hard as Stone)

  15. #15
    Sandworm Swallows
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    Ahh just gave those a listen, definitely sounds like his work.