The Lost Ark of Ambinet Music

I don’t know when it happened but in mainstream gaming and even movies I have noticed a shift from ambient to bombastic “in your face” music. Now, there are some moments where this is necessary. If you are playing a first person shooter like Doom the hard rock just adds to the flavor and chaos. But more often than not the background music should be ambient and should assist the situation or scene, not dominate it. I know a lot of gamers like to turn the in game music off and play their own and that’s fine. For the few of us remaining who like to enjoy what the musicians provided for the game, I would like to comment on why I think ambient music is important to get right.

In an MMO, there is a lot of repetition; you are questing in some zones for hours at a time, and often return to these zones on other characters, gather ingredients for crafting or sometimes you are tasked to return to these places. You cannot have loud crescendos or overbearing music that is repeated over and over. No one got this wrong more than the MMO Wildstar, which was supposed to be the sci-fi spiritual successor to World of Warcraft. After years of near-futility, the game is closing its doors for good this month. I have a theory that the game was just too frantic. The UI, the monsters, the pacing, and yes, the music, was so crazy and nuts and so fast paced that how could anyone sit down after a long day at work or school and relax playing a game like this for hours at a time? It was shame because the game had promise; it had some beautiful artwork and nice mountains and vistas. Unfortunately the developers never thought about the importance that a nice ambient, soft background tune goes great with open scenery.

World of Warcraft has always gotten
its music right

In movies there is a fine line when you notice the music, and when the music completely takes over. Raiders of the Lost Ark (scored by John Williams) has some of the greatest music sequences I have ever heard and accompanies the scenes perfectly. But what happens when you push this a bit further? You get Hans Zimmer, a great composer, who went on a brilliant streak of amazing music in the 90’s (Thelma & Louise, Crimson Tide, Prince of Egypt, Gladiator) and a nice collaboration with the equally impressive James Newton Howard for the Dark Knight films; suddenly decided to have his music take over the end of Inception and completely drown out half the movie Interstellar. Maybe the sound mixer did not want to hurt Mr. Zimmer’s feelings but would it have been too much to ask “can we turn this down slightly so we can hear the characters speak”?