All things God of War

[Michiel K]

Fascinating take on the game, KSub, great read.

[KSubzero1000]

There is one element I forgot to mention, one that I definitely feel less charitable about, and that is the use of music in this game.

There is a trend in the video game industry to nerf music nowadays - to keep scores in the background and to focus on sound design and voice acting instead. A lot of the bombastic, memorable scores of past generations are often being replaced by generic sounding tunes that lack impact and charisma. This game is no exception. The old GoW games have fantastic soundtracks even outside of their iconic main theme, but this one? The main tune that plays when booting the game is fairly nice, if rather toothless, but the rest... just kinda fizzled away, to be honest. I can't remember any track that truly stood out to me in any way.

That's exactly the kind of thing that flies under the radar when playing the game but leaves a rather bad impression afterwards. Same as with RE7 or MGSV: Where are the memorable OSTs that beg to be listened to on their own?

There is a similar trend happening in Hollywood as well. Old school blockbusters like The Good The Bad & The Ugly, The Godfather, Indiana Jones, Terminator, Rocky, Jurassic Park, etc... have powerful, sweeping orchestral scores that all have a very distinct identity and immediately bring the films to mind. But I'd be very surprised if anyone reading this could sing the themes of more modern big budget films like Inception, Planet of the Apes or anything from the MCU without looking them up beforehand. Professional composers are understandably rather upset about this trend.


My overall enthusiasm has lessened a little bit since finishing this game. I certainly think it's one of the greatest AAA titles in recent years, but it is also representative of a lot of questionable design trends. The best iteration of a shaky concept, so to speak.


PS: I know that kintaris has played this game and is very well versed in video game soundtracks, so I'd certainly be interested to hear what he thinks of all this, if possible.

[ratsoalbion]

Totally agree about both game and film scores. I don’t want everything to have a bombastic, melodic recurring theme but I also feel that things have gone too far the other way.

The old GoW theme used to elevate the content for me and, tellingly, I have had that simple Alan Silvestri Avengers fanfare going round in my head on a loop since seeing Infinity War last Monday.

[chase210]

I'm not sure how motivated I am to finish this game now, I must confess. I find it playing to be an absolute chore, which is a shame. It sort of feels like god of war has sacrificed a little of its identity to bring it more in line with recent AAA games. Which is fine, and there is some stuff I like, just not enough.

[macstat]

Totally agree on the music part. It's totally forgettable. I cant remember a single tune from it.
In a way, it totally works, cause that game is in part about

Spoiler: show

Kratos trying to find his peace with what he's done in the past.

But how cool would be if his theme from previous games would play when he goes into the Spartan rage!

[KSubzero1000]

But how cool would be if his theme from previous games would play when he goes into the Spartan rage!

Yeah, that would have been amazing. But really, I'd be fine with not re-using any of the past soundtracks if it meant that the new GoW would be full of its own memorable tunes that help to better establish the world of Norse mythology. The problem is that it has been replaced with a bunch of nothing. I'm listening to the new OST right now and it just sounds so... bland and generic. Not bad, but simply forgettable.

I also think that the old games have much more to offer than just the main theme. Listen to this:


Unless my ears are playing tricks on me, you can hear the lyre strings being pinched in this one. Doesn't get much more Greek than that! It's a great slow-paced background exploration theme that perfectly sells the sense of location.


Great rhythmic tune with a steady sense of escalation that perfectly underlines a climactic bossfight.


Bombastic track representing the sense of raw, mythical carnage of the GoW universe. There is so much weight behind this one alone.

This stuff is important. That's why I keep going on about "audiovisual presentation" every other day.

[kintaris]

Well, I'm just catching up on all of this now so I'll give my two cents, particularly as Ksubzero1000 so kindly requested them!

Specifically on God of War - agreed, this is a particularly dull soundtrack and a lot of the game's set-pieces suffer because of it. While it's possibly indicative of an overall trend, unfortunately it's also indicative of Bear McCreary's more recent work to my ears. I loved the Battlestar Galactica reboot soundtrack back in the day but his later work on The Walking Dead seems to be aiming for atmospheric but ends up just being generic filler.

I don't personally find this to be a trend in movies and games to devalue thematic music though. I still think Michael Giacchino is doing excellent work creating memorable themes and as Leon mentioned, Alan Silvestri remains an absolute master of the bombastic adventure - the Avengers theme still sends a shiver up my spine to a similar degree as my beloved Back to the Future.

In games, the vast majority of my favourite scores are from the last ten years, at least two thirds of them are triple-A blockbusters. I spend a lot of time with them and the themes get in my head, whether it's Geralt of Rivia's beautifully unusual recurring motif, "Ezio's Family" getting a satisfying nostalgic sting in a later Assassin's Creed or the triumphant fanfare announcing the arrival of the Normandy into the fray. Yes, I can sing them all without looking them up first - I often do while I'm cleaning, to my wife's utter confusion.

I think the bigger problem there is that there's so many movies and games to absorb, we don't re-watch and re-play them often enough for the whole soundtrack to sink in. Yes, John Williams work is masterful, exceptional, we may never see his like again. Nevertheless, the themes stick with us because they were absolutely everywhere, for decades, and there wasn't such a deluge of other franchise themes for our ears to try and identify. Same with earlier videogames - Mario's themes are with us because it's Mario. People who had never touched a video game knew them, not just because they're masterpieces but because everyone knew who Mario was. He wasn't lost in the shuffle. It seems to me that some composers are reacting better to the modern media chaos than others.

Some composers are simply better at creating subtle but powerful themes than others - you don't have to be bombastic to be memorable. Santa Monica clearly wanted this game to share some DNA with The Last of Us in its tone and atmosphere, certainly outside of the boss battles. I suspect McCreary just isn't the best in the business when it comes to building themes and motifs that can swell and recede with the action - in chasing subtlety, he's lost any identity. In comparison, The Last of Us has a very identifiable and resonant score - it's still subtle, but it ebbs and flows with the player's and character's journey. You feel it when it returns to the forefront - it's there right when you need it.

The modern God of War must have been a particularly challenging game to score because of the physical space it sits in too - this slightly awkward open-world-but-not-as-you-know-it. The player is given space to ponder and take in a view, but nowhere near as much as, say, Skyrim. Skyrim's beautiful but meandering score has space to breathe because we expect the player to be spending a lot of time walking around and soaking it in. Meanwhile a score like Mass Effect 2 has these short and effective soundscapes and battle themes because the areas you visit or fight in are very distinct, very finite. The composer knows exactly when to attack and retreat, and can construct a theme around a very specific location, visual identity and enemy type.

God of War's problem is that it sells itself on this contiguous, seamless but fairly empty world, full of linear corridors but also with this slight impetus to explore - but the spaces are mostly dead. Areas and even enemies bleed into one another without a distinct break in visual identity, apart from when you visit other realms. So where do you put the themes? It's certainly possible, similar games have managed it (hello Dark Souls, greetings Shadow of the Colossus), but it's certainly more difficult. It's telling that neither of my examples have traditional Hollywood narrative and character arcs to worry about, unlike God of War.

Missed tricks in my opinion are a strong central theme for Kratos, one for the antagonist and one for Atreus and his mother. A simple motif drawing on Kratos' past but bringing in Nordic instrumentation would have been an easy win, something that can plink away in the background in quieter moments and surge into life every time he engages in some ridiculous and bloody acrobatics around a boss.

Emergent fights could have easily had stronger recurring battle themes drawing on folkloric traditions and instrumentation - see The Witcher 3's Silver for Monsters.

The Lake of the Nine should have had, in my opinion, a subtle and atmospheric take on a theme we already identify with the father-son relationship, given that we may often stay there and punt around listening to stories of their respective homelands. Tyr's Temple and the central chamber could have been our Firelink Shrine, or our Normandy Galaxy Map, but instead they seem stifling in their near-silence.

Ultimately in an attempt to be many things, God of War's score ends up being nothing. It lacks a thematic skeleton because it's too nervous about disrupting that continuous, sombre world. It's a huge shame and I think it's a reflection of some of the game's other problems too. A certain lack of richness and bombast in the pursuit of emotional storytelling and subverting expectations. In pursuit of this weird sense of "maturity" that the triple-A industry seems obsessed with.

[KSubzero1000]

Fantastic read, kintaris. Thanks a lot for sharing. I can see where you're coming from and it certainly made me re-evaluate some of this stuff despite not being very familiar with some of these references.

I think the bigger problem there is that there's so many movies and games to absorb, we don't re-watch and re-play them often enough for the whole soundtrack to sink in. Yes, John Williams work is masterful, exceptional, we may never see his like again. Nevertheless, the themes stick with us because they were absolutely everywhere, for decades, and there wasn't such a deluge of other franchise themes for our ears to try and identify. Same with earlier videogames - Mario's themes are with us because it's Mario. People who had never touched a video game knew them, not just because they're masterpieces but because everyone knew who Mario was. He wasn't lost in the shuffle.

There is definitely a lot of truth to what you're saying here, but I also think that we should take the way in which music is being presented / used into consideration, regardless of its actual quality. A sound mixing that puts the score front and center will have a massive influence as to how the player will absorb and remember data. Take the original Halo, for example: the monks start humming as soon as you get to the main menu. The audio imprint is already happening before the player even controls the main character for the first time. It's not just that the game has a fantastic score in a vacuum, but that it is confident enough in it so as to put in the foreground and to never let the player forget about it. The different pieces of the soundtrack are varied enough so as to not become repetitive, but there is always something to listen to.

Conversely, a game that hesitates to use its own score to its full potential and instead prioritizes sound effect and voice acting during sound mixing is more or less doomed to leave a much weaker impression by default, regardless of the actual quality of said score.

So I think it's a combination of two factors: Mario has an incredibly memorable theme because the games are made to be played in short bursts and have fantastic replay value, but also because Charles Martinet isn't interrupting the score by holding self-indulgent monologues about the harsh realities of the Mushroom serfdom every time he gets to the castle.

It's the same as with Resident Evil: In the old-school games, the music always sets the scene and is the primary factor in creating the atmosphere. But in RE7, it's the various sound effects that have priority seating. The end result certainly sounds more realistic, but is nowhere as memorable.

Missed tricks in my opinion are a strong central theme for Kratos, one for the antagonist and one for Atreus and his mother. A simple motif drawing on Kratos' past but bringing in Nordic instrumentation would have been an easy win, something that can plink away in the background in quieter moments and surge into life every time he engages in some ridiculous and bloody acrobatics around a boss.

Emergent fights could have easily had stronger recurring battle themes drawing on folkloric traditions and instrumentation - see The Witcher 3's Silver for Monsters.

The Lake of the Nine should have had, in my opinion, a subtle and atmospheric take on a theme we already identify with the father-son relationship, given that we may often stay there and punt around listening to stories of their respective homelands. Tyr's Temple and the central chamber could have been our Firelink Shrine, or our Normandy Galaxy Map, but instead they seem stifling in their near-silence.

I completely agree with all of this. Those are exactly the kind of subtle little touches that would have made a huge difference in the end.

[Flabyo]

I think I mostly agree with you.

There are defintely games where you wouldn’t want any music to stomp in and make a fuss (for example, Hellblade and it’s very unique audio design really doesn’t need a big soundtrack).

But I think a character motif or two wouldn’t go amiss. Horizon Zero Dawn has one, and knows how to use it.

One of my favourite game music moments of the last decade was when you get to the stinger at the very end of the credits in Deus Ex Human Revolution and it doubles down on its ‘dun dun duh!’ moment by playing in the theme tune of the very first Deus Ex game, which had been totally absent from the score until that moment. (A little bit like how they used the Bond theme in Casino Royale actually, now I think about it)

[kintaris]

There is definitely a lot of truth to what you're saying here, but I also think that we should take the way in which music is being presented / used into consideration, regardless of its actual quality. A sound mixing that puts the score front and center will have a massive influence as to how the player will absorb and remember data. Take the original Halo, for example: the monks start humming as soon as you get to the main menu. The audio imprint is already happening before the player even controls the main character for the first time. It's not just that the game has a fantastic score in a vacuum, but that it is confident enough in it so as to put in the foreground and to never let the player forget about it. The different pieces of the soundtrack are varied enough so as to not become repetitive, but there is always something to listen to.

Conversely, a game that hesitates to use its own score to its full potential and instead prioritizes sound effect and voice acting during sound mixing is more or less doomed to leave a much weaker impression by default, regardless of the actual quality of said score.

I think you're right and I'm probably not being entirely fair to Mr. McCreary in this case! But I've just listened to the OST in isolation and to be honest there's not a lot there for a sound mixer to go on in my opinion. In fact the issues with the mix start within the track itself - there's a heavy reliance on a very straightforward and uninteresting strings section often drowning out interesting percussion work and male vocals. But again it really comes down to a lack of themes and a lack of satisfying variation in the themes that do exist. Atreus' mother has a theme that we hear a couple of times but even if the instrumentation varies, the speed tone and volume are pretty much the same. You don't get that satisfying hit of hearing a familiar melody in a new mixture because it's too close to the original.

From what I can discern the antagonist also has a theme but it doesn't amount to much but a very slight violin melody laid over a hissing bed of yet more strings. I'm certainly not really remembering it too well and I only finished last week!

In contrast, I hadn't really noticed the Assassin's Creed Origins soundtrack within the game experience but in isolation I think It's a great piece of work. So as you said it seems like sometimes music is possibly de-emphasised in the literal sound track, in favour of effects and voice work.

[macstat]

The Lake of the Nine should have had, in my opinion, a subtle and atmospheric take on a theme we already identify with the father-son relationship, given that we may often stay there and punt around listening to stories of their respective homelands.

I think this was a deliberate choice. They threw a lot of chatter between Kratos-Boy-Head trifecta. They probably didn't want for music to interfere with building relationship between those characters.

But I think a character motif or two wouldn’t go amiss. Horizon Zero Dawn has one, and knows how to use it.

HZD has a theme? Im not even trying to be mean. I'm replaying it right now and for the love of all that is holy I only noticed that one wilderness tune that sounds a lot like shady sands in first fallout and that overwhelming dark tune when you're stalking your prey (or you are hiding from it ). I had to go to youtube and check, and while that tune sounds vaguely familiar I can't really place it in the game.


There's also an interesting video about scores in movies that is kinda relevant to this discussion. I dont agree with everything in it (mainly because they omit elephant in the room that is avengers theme) but they show couple of interesting examples of how reusable music these days have become.

[Flabyo]

School of Movis did an entire episode of their podcast debunking that ‘marvel has no themes’ video, so you’re not going to convince me with that

[ratsoalbion]

Marvel literally has one theme that I can actually remember and hum/whistle though.

[AndrewBrown]

That's a problem I've noticed broadly with popular media lately: I cannot for the life of me remember the music in most of them. I've tried to blame it on a lack of repetition; I don't consume and re-consume media as voraciously as I did when I was a kid because I can generally afford to move on to the next thing when I finish the last thing. But is it the opposite problem? Is music just genuinely not as memorable or iconic as it used to be? I'm not so sure. I've had people come at me with "the Uncharted theme is iconic" and every time I try to remember it, it turns into the Pirates of the Caribbean theme.

[Combine Hunter]

Marvel literally has one theme that I can actually remember and hum/whistle though.

Yes, I agree. "Taking a Stand" from Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

In all seriousness, I agree that there is a lot of forgettable music in Marvel movies generally. But The Avengers theme is treated like the only memorable piece of music, and it's not even my third favourite track.

[ratsoalbion]

I’ve only seen most of the Marvels once each, which I’m sure is part of the issue.

[Stanshall]

I know this is cherry picking an all-timer but having only properly played Tropical Freeze with the Switch release, I'd say with complete confidence that it has on average one 'future classic' theme per world. It's an astonishing piece of work, especially as the opening levels are pretty generic and don't promise anything out of the ordinary. There's one particular underwater piece which reminds me of the original Resi save room music and I was swooning from start to finish.

In film, the last to really blow me away with use of music was Terrence Malick's The New World, which I saw last year in floods of joyous tears, but that's thirteen years old. Tree of Life also had incredible music, used wonderfully but you know, we're talking Terrence Malick. He's in a different league. I can't remember any notable blockbuster theme or particularly distinctive musical personality since possibly the LOTR films! The Daft Punk soundtrack to Tron Legacy had some amazing tracks but much of it was generic bombast.

[kintaris]

...every time I try to remember it, it turns into the Pirates of the Caribbean theme.

As much as I still think a huge part of the problem is how fleeting our engagement with media tends to be nowadays, I also have to admit that a silly percentage of action-adventure themes in the last ten years sound slightly like Pirates of the Caribbean, enough for the tune to turn in my head.

And it may well be that a lot of blockbuster composers just don't have the time or patience or understanding of the work they're composing for, to produce the complex and resonant themes that John Williams and the like brought us. If anyone wants to deep-dive into those classic themes further I thoroughly recommend The Soundtrack Show podcast, which is almost like Song Exploder for instrumental music.

Anyway. God of War, eh? Still playing and enjoying it!

[KSubzero1000]

Interestingly enough, this article just came out, analysing some of the character themes of the soundtrack.

Anyway. God of War, eh? Still playing and enjoying it!

How are you getting along with the [REDACTED]s, then?

[kintaris]

Interestingly enough, this article just came out, analysing some of the character themes of the soundtrack.

Anyway. God of War, eh? Still playing and enjoying it!

How are you getting along with the [REDACTED]s, then?

I took out all of the [REDACTED]s in [REDACTED], but then I went after the [REDACTED] in [REDACTED] and frankly that one can go [REDACTED].

I just need to pay more attention to the labyrinthine upgrade system, but when I only have mop up activities to do it feels irritating to suddenly have to tinker with systems I have ignored for 90% of the game.