When it comes to music, I prefer nothing over a good musical score. Whether its the trumpets that kicking while Spider-man is swinging through the city or soft Piano as Yuna is dancing over a lake or the awesome orchestra that comes with Sephiroth appearing on the screen. Music has a powerful way of impacting us. We don’t have to see anything on screen but when we hear the Jaws theme, we know there is trouble or when we hear the 007 snip, we already have a clue as what’s to come. Plus, music can heighten the emotion and our senses, gives us clues and help shift our emotion. There is not a better example then the eerie settings of Silent Hill that do such an amazing job of playing with the audience and giving false implications of what’s to come while scaring the big jesus out of you. But when it comes to movies, there has never really been limitations. The composer and the sound mixer were able to create the mix they wish and deliver it to their audience.
This wasn’t always the case for the gaming community, dating back to the Atari that just hand Zap Zap noises. Sure we can fast forward the PS2 and say we had Dolby Digital but there was still limitations on what the hardware could provide and so music in many cases never reached its true potential. Square-Enix’s Yoko Shimomura who is responsible for the music of Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy XIII thinks all of that is changing with the PlayStation 3.
“With the PlayStation 2, sound production was mainly based on the internal sound chip, not streaming, so it was a constant battle with memory and limitations,” she said. “With the PlayStation 3, I’m expecting to have it sound the way I please, without limitations.”
Shimomura later on went to say “the sound quality of current generation game hardware is pretty advanced, so it’s ideal if we can utilize streaming.” Fans of the PS3 have already been treated to some amazing music already from Uncharted and Heavenly Sword (although I dearly wish for a soundtrack from Heavenly Sword) and even award winning from Lair. But it seems things are only going to get better as Harry Gregson-Williams treats us to yet another Metal Gear score and Square-Enix never seems to fail with a Final Fantasy score, although we do miss Nobuo Uematsu.
