However, the only thing that Western developers still can't grasp is how important MUSIC is in video games. Japanese developers are much much better at creating music to complement their storytelling.
First of all, a game such as Dragon Age: Origins, with a playthrough time of roughly 50-70 hours should not, under any circumstance have a soundtrack of 17 tracks. I mean really...? 17 tracks, make that 14 if you take out the menu/loading screen theme, ending theme and Leliana's song. 14 songs....over 70 hours? WOW. That means that you can spend roughly 5 hours listening to each song on repeat while playing the game. This is not more evident than in Orzamar when you spend maybe 5-7 hours within the city dealing with the whole political situation. I though I am going to go NUTS listening to the Orzamar theme over and over and over again. I know that I can turn the music OFF.....but then what is the point of music?
Common guys....the original Metal Gear Solid...for the PlayStation....an action game with about 6 hours of gameplay had 21 music tracks!
I can point to many Western RPGs with the same proglem. Oblivion was a huge game...with over 100 hours of gameplay if you did all the quests....number of songs in the sountrack? 26. That's 3.8 hours per song.
What's worse about these soundtracks is that they are not very good. They are fodder most of the time, as if the developers created one track per 10 hours of gameplay....(track 1 - heroic music, track 2 - peaceful town, track 3 - large castle, track 4 - undergraound city, track 5 - elves in the forest, track 6 - battle music etc) And then they even fail to be original. Dwarves themes have lots of heavy instruments and elven music has little choir kids singing in alien languages blah blah blah.
Now look at some Japanese RPGs, starting with games that appered on the Super Nintendo. Back then, when develepors could not rely on graphics to tell stories in their games....(could not really use facial expressions or even cut scenes etc.)...they created amazing soundtracks that gave each location character. Each character often had a theme song, each location, each dungeon, each situation.....everything was based on music. It really drove games....And these theme very very simple...often midi tracks....and they are still better in many instances than the soundtracks that Western developers churn out these days.
As an example. Final Fantasy III (VI in the United States) had 3 disks of music with 61 tracks. Chrono Trigger had 65 tracks. Final Fantasy VII had 4 disks with 85 tracks. I can keep going....ending at Lost Odyssey for the Xbox 360 with 56 tracks.
And it's not even quantity over quality. All of these tracks had character and were designed specifically for storytelling. Each track had a purpose and added to the experience.
I strongly believe that Final Fantasy VII is such a huge cult classic not because of it's strong battle system (because its' not), not because of the graphics (because they are really bad), but simply because of how the music gives life to the characters and the world. When fighting Sephiroth at the end of the game....you saw a blocky figure being attacked by your blocky looking party members....but when you heard that Sephiroth theme....you could feel that this is it...and you got goosebumps.
When fighting the last boss in Dragon Age....**** I don't even remember what music was playing....felt like any other battle in the game.
Simply put, Western developers must really step up and start taking music and sound way more seriously in their RPGs. I spend 70 playing your game....don't make me cringe through 7 hours of Orzamar theme....
A two hour movie usually has a soundtrack with 15-20 tracks. A 70 hour epic dark fantasy game should not have a 17 song soundtrack.....
Hopefully, you will not reuse the same music in Dragon Age Awakening....and hopefully a proper sequel will leave a more memorable musical landscape than the Origins did.
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