Viewing the music differently as you age

[Lone Wolf Leonhart]

The other day I was thoroughly exhausted. I don't remember the circumstance, but this song appeared in my feed.

For some reason, it was like I had heard it in a different light. Some combination of being tired and sad made this song I've known for 20+ years sound like I was listening to it for the first time again. A wave of emotions hit me.

The effect of the song changes over the course of the game. Initially it represents the tranquility of the church and its flowers in an otherwise shambled Midgar, but after huge events in the game happen and you find yourself coming back to the church, it reminds you of your time spent with Aerith.

All this got me to thinking about how hearing a song changes in your own life, as well. When you're a kid playing Final Fantasy VII, you enjoy it in the game, maybe you associate it with something in your life at the time. But when you get older, in addition to all that, you also have the 20 years of memories and nostalgia that gets funneled into your enjoyment of the song.

I guess I just appreciate it more as time goes on.


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[Christmas]

I have always liked this music along with Celes Theme from FF VI. Somehow I find the two relatively similar. Maybe the same soothing and yet bittersweet (bittersweet is because someone got stabbed and this plays) feel to it. I think it is like the threads that I revived. It is really different when you read the same shit a decade or more later. What turns out to be embarrassing became educating. :bigsmile:

In other words, we have grown and looked at things differently.

[Tigmafuzz]

I've been having the same experience lately, listening to all sorts of music from games I played when I was still in my most formative years. The Wild Arms and Lunar soundtracks hit me sometimes, as do most of my favorite tracks from every Final Fantasy. The PS1 era in particular brings me so much nostalgia, it's unreal. Chrono Cross, Star Ocean, Suikoden, Front Mission, Symphony of the Night, Azure Dreams, Legaia, Threads of Fate, all of their soundtracks resonate with me and bring me a powerful sense of familiarity and peace when I hear them as an adult. Thousand Arms gives me a very strange sense of melancholy if I try to replay it, maybe because I loved the characters so much when I first played it. I can't remember a lot about my early life outside of video games anymore because of the dissociation from the events going on in my life, but I can still remember all the names of every character in every RPG, all the events and story beats, all the music, all the time I spent glued to my TV to get away from it all. The same goes for all the games I was playing on other systems around that time, but the PS1 was simply the king for me.


The effect of the song changes over the course of the game. Initially it represents the tranquility of the church and its flowers in an otherwise shambled Midgar, but after huge events in the game happen and you find yourself coming back to the church, it reminds you of your time spent with Aerith.


I love when things like this happen in games. The church doesn't really change, the flowers don't really change, the music doesn't change. The only thing that changes is your experience, and it presents everything in a new light, perhaps giving you a new appreciation for the things it represents, or for the times you had there. It makes you stop and take notice of how affected you really are by the story, really driving home the reason you play RPGs in the first place.

[BG-57]

The concept of leitmotif goes back as far as Wagner, most likely further. So it makes sense that the character's theme helps us to connect to the character, even if they're not present using musical cues. A great example of this is the Imperial March, which first appeared in the Empire Strikes Back as a stirring musical backdrop to the might and power of the Galactic Empire but has appeared in pretty much every movie since then to represent Darth Vader and his tragic story. Hearing it while watching a sweeping vista of Star Destroyers is very different than hearing it when meeting Anakin as a cheerful child.

Aerith's theme has popped up in expected places. I once heard it played on clarinet during a church service. Since the musician was a teenager I'm guessing he didn't think the adults would notice the source but of a course I did. So it works in new ways even beyond the confines of the game.