test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
The Music of STO
atharun18999
Member Posts: 66 Arc User
Hello fellow music lovers! Music is very big to me in games,movies,shows, etc. In STO I find the music to be hit or miss. When the Delta Rising trailer came out I felt disappointed by the music but then I can listen to the New Romulus music all day as it is gorgeous.
What is your favorite piece so far?
New Romulus Theme for me -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUtHTe-S3Cc
What is your favorite piece so far?
New Romulus Theme for me -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUtHTe-S3Cc0
Comments
I have noticed that as well. It seems there are some great gems but a lot of the music is generic or not given nearly as much importance by the studio. It's a shame because the music goes a long way to setting the theme and the feeling of the game.
The main STO theme (at the title screen), combat theme, and Klingon Opera Guy music were, I think, developed by a composer who used to work at Cryptic. I think they sprung for a composer for the Delta Rising theme as well (which I like as a Voyager fill-in theme better than the Elite Forces theme). They did license the "Amok Time" theme as well.
Most of the other stuff, I think, comes from a library that any of us could also license from for projects if we had the money. I also think Cryptic has a separate outfit that they license trailer music for.
I used to chat with Mark Valentine about this stuff at length. He was Cryptic's trailer guy. He was always careful about anything proprietary at Cryptic but we'd talk about this stuff a fair amount in general terms and had an idea for something I think we were trying to approach Michael Dorn with. I think he'd have flipped out over the Trek additions the game has made since he passed away.
Here's the Delta Rising theme:
Here's Elite Forces:
I think EF went for too much of a musical clone of the TV theme whereas I think DR actually succeeds more in making me feel the way Voyager's theme did. That said, I'm a big fan of whenever the game uses "softer" themes. For me, that's part of what makes exploration or a lengthy play session enjoyable. New Romulus did a nice job of that.
I think it's one thing the competitors at Blizz got REALLY right with WoW. They have not just original music but a variety of moods represented and themes that are used well operatically. If they use a stinger of a particular theme, longtime players know what character it refers to. It creates emotional touchpoints.
I know I over-rely on this as an example but note the use of themes. Almost every piece of music here is a theme or a variation on a theme assigned to an empire or group. This was an in-game cinematic.
I also like how each theme they chose for a race was... A struggle theme, I guess you'd call it. You think about the struggle of the species in question and give each of them a sad/sweet theme aside from humans and orcs who get patriotic themes.
So you have the Worgen, who are Victorian-inspired humans gone Werewolf. And so they get this chamber harpsichord theme with a Halloween-y jazz sax melody. The Shamanic Tauren get a celtic/Native American hybrid theme. But with each species, you get a sense of what their central tragedy is through their music.
If there's a Trek emotional note STO hasn't quite mastered, it's melancholy. Action, pride, valor, plot twists, STO has at least moments where it hits those things.
I like Nimbus but it lacks a strong theme. New Romulus is nice but is a bit TOO unsettled to fully hold my interest. Nothing that says, "This is our home."
I like Hathon on Bajor, Starfleet Academy, Qo'noS. But they're too small and there's very little sense of emotional geography, ie. "This is the place where something happened." I'm not saying I want every place to be an iconic Trek locale relevant to a character but I think there's something "grounding" musically and visually if you think about the locales as "this is the place where Lt. Jane Smith met her husband" and not just "This is where I buy consumables."
I'd really, really like Veridian III as a zone. It should be relatively easy. Any settlement there would be new. But I'd love to have the remains of Soran's weapons platform and a pile of rocks with Kirk's combadge on it with a somber Trek theme playing as you approach it. Lots of wind. Maybe a feel similar to Journey.
If you like atmosphere and STORY (not dialogue, not plot, pure STORY), you have to play Journey.
Some of my favorite STO tunes come from Legacy of Romulus.
Did they get Zamfir to do that one?
No idea
And of course the New Romulus theme is high quality.
It's not that they don't want to, they simply can't.