For my cash, some of the attention-grabbing facets of a sport’s creation is the composition and orchestration of its music. With Ultimate Fantasy, that’s doubly the case as a result of for me, and I think about for thus many others, the music of this collection is certainly one of its greatest components. Be it lo-fi channels, new preparations, compilations, piano variations, or one thing else, Ultimate Fantasy music makes its means into lots of my playlists.
That’s why I used to be so excited to talk with composer Masayoshi Soken about his rating for Ultimate Fantasy XVI. You may acknowledge his title as he’s additionally the composer of Ultimate Fantasy XIV. Nonetheless, if you happen to don’t, there’s an opportunity it’s a reputation you come to recollect following the discharge of FFXVI, as a result of after greater than three hours of hands-on time with the sport in Sq. Enix’s Tokyo, Japan, workplace, I’m assured we’re about to get a banger of a rating.
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Ultimate Fantasy XVI Composer Masayoshi Soken
In speaking with Soken, I wished to talk to him about a number of the main themes and melodies of any Ultimate Fantasy sport – issues just like the Prelude, the primary theme, the Victory Fanfare, and extra – and he had loads to say. On this four-part collection, I’ll be breaking down completely different facets of the music that excite me and hopefully you too.
The Music of Ultimate Fantasy XVI Half 1 – Creating The Prelude
The Prelude is a bit of music, or moderately a melody, that’s appeared in virtually each Ultimate Fantasy sport in a method or one other. It’s a comparatively easy collection of arpeggios that famed Ultimate Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu created in simply 10 minutes for the unique sport. There’s no means Uematsu might have predicted the legacy of this melody within the Nineteen Eighties when he created it, however he and lots of different composers have remixed, recomposed, reorchestrated, and composed new iterations of it for different video games within the collection and extra. Should you don’t acknowledge it based mostly on the title – Prelude – there’s nonetheless an excellent probability you’ve heard it.
Try the unique Ultimate Fantasy Prelude beneath:
I used to be curious how Soken created the Prelude for FFXVI, which some might need seen is in a minor key. However earlier than diving into its creation for this sport, I requested Soken the place he begins and the way he charts a course towards creating what’s now a 200-plus observe rating for FFXVI.
“Early within the venture, I had a number of backwards and forwards with most important state of affairs author and the artistic director [Kazutoyo Maehiro] and he would give me suggestions on what he wished within the sport to suit his story,” Soken tells me inside one of many recording studios the place he works. However Maehiro grew too busy and FFXVI producer Naoki Yoshida, who is similar Yoshida that’s director of FFFXIV, stepped in to assist information Soken.
“They wished to have this very grand classical really feel to the general soundtrack,” he says. “What’s most essential within the sport is the sport expertise and what gamers are going to really feel once they’re taking part in the sport. It’s as much as you [himself] to have music that matches that have completely and enhances it and doesn’t really feel like a separate factor. It has to suit the world, it has to suit the characters and the kind of characters they’re and what they signify. And since we have now a really darkish and heavy story, a number of the music [that we end up creating] has that very darkish, heavy, stoic really feel to it.”
“All of the samples that we obtained from him [Yoshida] had been very, very severe and direct. Once more, what you’ll name that basic, classical kind of music and [he] actually didn’t need us to have an excessive amount of enjoyable with it. I don’t know if that’s a great way to say it, however once more, he wished it very severe.”
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Ultimate Fantasy XVI Producer Naoki Yoshida
With that tone and path in place, Soken was capable of start creating a number of the must-have components of a Ultimate Fantasy, just like the Prelude.
“This was some of the tough issues I needed to do on this venture,” Soken tells me once I ask how composing a brand new Prelude went. “You have got this very recognizable melody that Uematsu-san composed, however as you recognize, it’s in a significant key. And since we had been aiming for one thing that was darker, that main key didn’t actually work. You have got this excellent main key melody that’s shiny, like a crystal, however we have to make it darkish, so the very first thing we needed to do is change that melody from a significant key to a minor key.”
Soken teases that there’s “truly a number of completely different music that we had taken from older Ultimate Fantasies” and integrated into the rating for FFXVI. However like with the Prelude, many needed to be reworked right into a minor key.
Whereas FFXVI’s official Prelude observe has but to be launched (and admittedly, I don’t know if that’s within the playing cards, however most Ultimate Fantasy soundtracks are available on streaming companies at this time so I think about it’s), you’ll be able to hear a style of it within the background right here:
This Prelude represents the darker, extra mature tone FFXVI has displayed up to now (and it aligns properly with the sport’s M score, a primary for the mainline numbered franchise). If Soken’s FFXIV Prelude is crystalline, virtually heavenly in tone, then his Prelude for FFXVI is infernal, and I can’t wait to listen to it extra in-game.
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