The sound of Music

[biXen]

Music is so gimmicky... it might be cool, but it's not as stylish... if you don't know what I mean go see Charlie's Angels... you'll understand why I didn't see it images/icons/grin.gif (the movie that destroyed "Smack my bitch up")

[Bushido]

...or the lack thereof. I've asked before about this, but somehow never got an official response. What happened to Teque's music? Why take it out? It seemed the only thing Max was lacking was a thumping soundtrack.
I've always said that the theme is really excellent, and the small chunks of music that kick in during intense action were fairly well done,but damn it....I want more!
Every time I through Max I'll play a tune in my head that would fit it...I hope very much that Remedy is listening to the sound of music, and saying to the themselves,"Now THIS would sound good playing in the background of the sequel!"

[Bushido]

Are you serious? They ruined that sweet tune by Prodigy? Damn...thank god I didn't see it......(uh..still waiting for an official response here...*sigh*)

[SkavenRMD]

Me too. (ie. I asked Petri about this, no response yet)

AFAIK, when Teque left the company and Kärtsy & Kajasto entered the scene, their music turned out to be enough, so Teque's songs were not used. Even though Remedy owns the rights for the songs Teque made while working there. I'm not exactly sure about the details however.

[SkavenRMD]

I have no disagreements with you there. Great music can really help a game - while poor music can ruin an otherwise cool game.

Another problem we had was the lack of disk space. We wanted to fit the game on one CD and a few extra music tracks can easily hog lots of megs.

[Death Mage]

Ah, music in video games, ironically I was just talking about this today with someone. Some of my personal picks:

DooM/DooM II - Some music was just PERFECT
Descent 2 - I just listened to this as a CD again, one of my all time fav's for video games.
Some of the Final Fantasy music rocks.
Almost any Castlevania.
And of course, that opening peice of Max Payne. images/icons/cool.gif
That "WAR!!!" song in Serious Sam during huge fights. images/icons/grin.gif

There are a lot of good games with good music. Sometimes they fit, sometimes they don't. Off-hand I can't think of much more. Music needs to fit the mood. A good haunting track in Castlevania, some really fasted paced stuff in Descent 2, or that excelent moody peice in Max Payne.. some just wouldn't fit elsewhere.

[ 11-02-2001: Message edited by: Death Mage ]

[Bushido]

Cool. Thanks for the info. But to me there wasn't enough in-game music. Music can really hold your attention to a game and get you bopping your head too. Look at Streets of Rage 2 for the 'ol Genesis. It was a side scrolling fighter that had tedious button mashing, but was a hit because of the superb techno soundtrack. Others come to mind:
Trickstyle-Dreamcast
The Lost Vikings-Super NES
Corridor 7-PC (yeah you heard me)
Duke Nukem 3D-PC

[Guest]

Music is one of the areas in Max Payne I had no issue with. As I had it turned off during gameplay I don't even know what or if I'm missing anything. The music during the title and story board scenes was perfectly acceptable, dare I say good.

I have no liking for nearly all music during gameplay largely on account of it being so bad and intrusive. As I've got older I've found I respond very badly to the adrenaline producing eardrum busting music that always seems to be flavour of the month amongst a self-styled "hardcore".


- Dist images/icons/smile.gif rtedReality

[SkavenRMD]

The only musical gripe from my standpoint was that we actually chose different musics and background ambience tracks for the graphic novels too. It felt really atmospheric, but this change was done at a very late stage of development when the code was already locked down. Alas, we noticed an annoying bug: Whenever the graphic novel mode was activated, you actually heard a bit of the previous music crossfading to the current music. It sounded like a glitch, so we decided to play it safe and go back to playing the same music in all graphic novels.

Better luck next time...

[PetriRMD]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Bushido:
What happened to Teque's music? Why take it out? <hr></blockquote>

Basically, once we started working with Kärtsy and Kajasto, we figured that the new songs just couldn't be that well mixed with Teque's work.

There was just too strong differences in style and sound that I felt that combining them would not have resulted into a cohesive end-result.

[Bushido]

Thanks for the reply Petri. I heard some of Teque's music and,yes, it would've been too much of a contrast. The theme or feel of the game was also of dread. There is some Techno/Industrial out there that has dread, but I understand your reason for cutting it.