> 'Leaving Valhalla' is the one I can name immediately. I'd need to go
> through the album to get you the other one.
Ah, it’s Kyd. I ended up just listening to the songs and Schachner’s, as I had disliked most of what I’d heard of his in the past (versus loving Origins, Infinite Warfare, Modern Warfare, and Anthem).
> long text incoming, sorry in advance...
> Do bear in mind that there's a reason why most of those examples you gave
> are an exception and not the rule. The Witcher 3, Spider-Man (both games
> actually), Ghost of Tsushima ARE exceptions precisely because the
> developers always had narrative at the forefront of every aspect in those
> games AND had the infrastructure to closely coordinate with their
> composers to get what they wanted. Witcher 3 had an even bigger advantage
> there BECAUSE Marcin Przybylowicz is Music Director at CDPR.
> I would actually consider these as part of the norm rather than
> exceptions. Other than Wintory and Balfe occassionally riffing on the main
> theme during the combat music, all of those scores are pretty
> location-specific and not that narrative-based.
I think that’s understating the latter(s) a lot. Balfe’s main themes get considerable air times during both cutscenes and on album (especially in the complete recordings), and most of the combat music (see: Freedom Fighter) doesn’t necessarily use it.
> Valhalla is not dissimilar in that they chose to have the score focus on
> the atmosphere of the game. It's just that, instead of trying to evoke the
> feel of Victorian London, or an adventure story in 18th century France or
> the US, it's trying to go for something more vicious and harsher than
> that.
> Because the thing is, in order to tell such tight musical narratives in an
> open-world setting as those examples you gave, composers need to know to
> some degree where their music is going to play at any given moment in the
> game and, well, that's rare, especially in this genre.
> Because open-world games are non-linear affairs, you have to think about
> music differently than just themes and character narrative.
> If, for example, you're fighting a random someone in the open world and
> music triggers, if the composer decides to include the main character
> theme in the cue, do they account for where the character is in their
> narrative arc? If the enemy you're fighting is part of a faction and the
> faction has a theme and the composer decides to include it in the cue, do
> they account for where the faction is at that point in the story? That
> gets complicated FAST because it's basically having to do math for how
> many story beats there are in the narrative and what impact they may have
> on the music and think of how many different combinations of themes in any
> given cue (which amounts to actual minutes of music they have to write)
> they are going to need.
> An example of this is Austin Wintory choosing to go both narratively and
> location-specific for his score to The Pathless. The game is open world
> and features four main areas, each with a boss to defeat. There are
> basically four pools (sets of cues) of open world music in the game while
> the character explores each area. The pools only change after you defeat a
> boss. Here's where it gets interesting-- while the game defines a path
> very clear for you to progress from area to area and defeat bosses in a
> specific order, you can also reasonably travel to either of the first
> three areas and defeat the bosses in whichever order you like. Each of the
> first three bosses (and therefore areas) have a solo instrument attached
> to them-- oud (a type of lute), double bass and bamboo flute. Wintory
> wrote sets of solo performances of each of these instruments for the first
> THREE pools of music so that, if a player somehow finds their way to the
> third area and hasn't defeated a boss yet, they get the first pool of
> music but with bamboo flute solos because they're in the bamboo flute boss
> area. So essentially you have around 6 different combinations of the score
> that can trigger depending on how you choose to play the game. And that's
> just with a broad-strokes approach. And mind you, Wintory has not been shy
> in saying how hard that whole score was to pull off.
> To me at least, it's no wonder why location-specific music (and thus
> narrative disconnection) is such a staple of open-world scores. It's far
> less complicated to write music based in which area you're
> fighting/exploring. And, personally, I wouldn't that lesser scoring. I do
> understand it being disappointed if thematic narrative was a main draw for
> me.
> Actually, another example it reminds me of is the opposite approaches
> Guerrilla Games and their composer team took with Horizon Zero Dawn and
> its sequel, Horizon Forbidden West.
> In Zero Dawn, the approach was for the music to be ALL about the
> environment and the cultures of the world rather than Aloy and her story
> and the characters she interacted with. Therefore, you've got a score
> that, other than Aloy's theme, is populated by location-specific motifs
> and themes that pop in and out but by no means build a narrative.
> Forbidden West, conversely, was approached with a very character-centric
> mindset. The composers all wrote themes and motifs for different
> characters and questlines and they all interact in a more narratively
> traditional manner. You've got lots of counterpoint throughout the score.
> A handful of the motifs go through some very interesting and emotionally
> rewarding variations. It's a different beast than Zero Dawn. The composers
> have also been very open about how hard it was for Music Supervisor Lucas
> van Tol to coordinate the work of five composers and have it make sense as
> a cohesive (yet distinctive) unite.
> (also, there's supposedly an interactive system tracking Aloy's emotional
> state throughout the game so that the music can accurately reflect that
> when you're exploring/fighting, so I'm excited to see that in action
> whenever I get to play the game)
> The bottom line, I guess, is that 'themeless' open-world scores (themeless
> only in the traditional sense, not that they don't actually have any) are
> fine by me because they're much harder to pull off than in your usual
> game. I don't know if the examples you gave are better because
> better varies from game to game, and of what little I've played of
> Assassin's Creed Valhalla, its score does a really good job with giving
> the game a distinctive sound and building an atmosphere. But Ghost of
> Tsushima and Spider-Man and Witcher 3 are 100% successful examples of
> musical narratives within the open-world genre.
Well, here’s the thing with me, and I’m terribly sorry to be this simple after all that passion.
I’m coming from the world of film music first, so that’s a world where 90% of music is perfect for the film, while far less is actually engaging on album.
This is something that I’m content with and have no issues with- like say Intellectually, there is absolutely nothing wrong with Chernobyl, The Conjuring, or Patriots Day as ways of representing the anguish, panic, and thrill of the horrors/lament on screen- but on album I find them either boring or irritating, depending on the sequence.
It’s like that with game scores, except instead of avoiding harsh avant-garde writing, it’s the matter of atmospherics that start to go in one ear out to the next, due to not having much of a melodic anchor.
Like, I completely respect the intellectual reasons for scoring to the title’s needs, I’m just approaching it from the point of view of someone who listens to scores for thematic storytelling, use in my Pathfinder RPG sessions, or enjoyable sounds (which even extends to stuff like Dunkirk -also has as an anchor, the siren motif-, Dune -various themes-, or Joker -Arthur’s theme-).
TLDR; I don’t consider it lesser scoring, I just don’t find it interesting storytelling, since I find atmospherics without any significant thematic anchor to come across as uninteresting to my listening preferences.
| 
That said, yeah, I still stand by all those reviews/ratings. As I mentioned in my first post, I typically don't dwell on the really horrible scores even if I review them. More of a get them covered then move on kinda deal. 
