Cradlis

Long Dead
Herald of the Dead
Immemorial
Ageless
OG 2020
Prophet
Old World
Harbinger
Feb 8, 2019
20
41
78
Hi there,

I would like to share something I lived 5 years ago when me and my friends discovered all together the game known as Ark Survival Evolved. We were not sure about this game at first, especially me because I'm not really fond of survival universes, but we paid for it so we gave it a try. It was a really long installation because the game was not optimized at all and the launch was, for my part, catastrophic. Needless to say it was not starting well. But then, some of my friends were able to access the main menu et they told me 'You have to keep trying, it's gonna be awesome'. So after a few more tries, I was able to enter the game and load the content until I finally got to the main menu. Oh boy, I was not prepared. This is what I heard, loud and clear in my headphones.


Out of context it may not sound as epic as I would like you to understand, but back then the surprise and excitement were total. All the struggles i had to start the game vanished and I even forgave those that came after. I was embarking on an epic journey with my friends, trying to survive on an island full of creatures and dinosaurs with nothing but my bare hands. I was not thrilled at first, but this theme alone is what made me stick to the game for months, which is a lot more time than I usually spend on survival games. And this feeling became stronger when we saw the metal pyramid like structures scattered accross the island with beams crossing the sky. It became something more than just survival, it meant mystery, exploration and treasures.

Now I know we don't have a lot of stuff to discuss about Deadhaus's music except for this :


I must say I really love the tone of it. It sound like an army of the dead marching, the awakening of the house of the dead. I don't know if this is gonna be the main theme or if it's even the final version of this music, but it got me at the very first second. I wanted to play it now.

All I want to say with all that is this : I hope you are preparing some ambiant horror music and some with battle tones, etc. But especially, I hope you are preparing one unique main theme for the whole game that will set the tone and make people want to play it even more. The main theme from Ark Survival Evolved alone saved this game to fall in disgrace in my heart because of all the problems it had. The game looks promising already because of all this undead thematic, but fitting music would be over the top dream 👌
 
I second that.
 
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The sort of dark villain vibes are definitely coming through with that track. The vocals really help carry over the combination of fantasy feels with the modern instruments
 
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Two games that instantly hooked me with Main Menu/Opening Theme music alone:
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver and Bloodborne. The specific songs being Ozar Midrashim and Omen, respectively. In fact, another great example would be Darksiders.

Now being the very same developers that created Soul Reaver, I trust the score is going to be amazing, and I highly anticipate hearing it.
 
Now being the very same developers that created Soul Reaver, I trust the score is going to be amazing, and I highly anticipate hearing it.
Well, strictly speaking, Denis created Bood Omen: Legacy of Kain, back in the day when the company was Silicon Knights. Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, was developed by Crystal Dynamics, and they made the game in the same universe as Blood Omen, though their own take of it. Denis did not participate on its development.
However, the devs of Apocalypse knows the importance of music, and I'm sure they will put effort into making something memorable in all aspects. :)
 
I liked that theme a lot. I'm not sure I'd call it titlescreen ready since there was spots I could hear as a professional recording artist (not of this genre, but I still make dark music) that they didn't go for the grab and yank you fully into the emotive experience. It did do that about 85% of the time, but for a main title screen for something epic it has to be on point at least 100% ;)

Mostly it was towards the end (though there was a couple lulls before that for split seconds). At the end it needed a tinge more higher timber tones (probably some soft cymbals) to accentuate the thumps and give it more differentiation and engage more brain meat, still an excellent composition though.

Generally my feeling is if I ever find myself thinking about the song structure while listening, something is off, it needs to grip start to finish so that I'm not thinking about the mechanics, otherwise I'm not fully immersed, and this is totally doable, even on songs I've heard a million times.

Consider Moving Mountains, even as a professional musician I can't think about the structure because there isn't enough time to, but the time you start analyzing it's already hit you with the next movement and sent another chill down your spine, and I've heard this song countless times. To be fair, it's not fair to compare to 2 steps in 99.5% of cases, but one thing you can't deny is that this song is title screen ready, not just for tons of blockbuster movies, but games and more who all reused it without most people noticing (this actually creates a weird media phenonmenon of associations both negative and positive on audiences as they age and hear the same themes either exactly or subconsciously derivative).
 
I completely agree but of course it can be said about the music of the game in general.. music can do a lot

But yeah, main screen is the business card of a game so it has to be epic, and the video you posted is a very nice soundtrack (and it has choirs... you can't go wrong with choirs)

i admit i wasn't expecting the electric guitar, it reminded me a bit of the soundtrack from the anime Overlord

 
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Although I believe in some games having epic music at the title screen I also think you don’t need it at all. As long as you have a unique menu that hooks people in is great also.

Examples:
Metro Series
Soul Reaver
Resident evil 7
The Bards Tale ps2/Xbox/PC
dead space series

some of these are simple yes but they immediately convey info about the world or game right off the bat. Some without any music at all and some with light ambience conveying mood. Not eveything bas to be overdone. not too mention some are diegetic and tie into the game world.
I’d like to see something that like, something that maybe zooms you around the world for each menu while having either just some nice ambient noise and sound or a light dark score.

each menu option could be a different area of the world or something.

we start the game off creating our character probably right? Have the new game option lead into the portal we come from or the summoning area.

the music/volume options could be a tavern or something

visuals could be an intensive area that showcases everything well and would be easy to make sense of this does this or that when on and off etc etc.

Epic menu music is cool but for me I personally end up turning it off after booting this or that game up because it gets annoying after a while.
 
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Never Really Cared for FF music.. Except for the infamous Boss theme that is; oh, and the theme you hear when you win; and the Chocobo song... seriously that- WAIT and Sepiroths theme. I think thats it.