What's that song from? It's beautiful

[Del Murder]

That's what Miriel said to me the other day while we were on a drive. I have a compilation of FF MP3s that I sometimes play in the car, and she remarked on one of the songs. So what game was it from? VII? IX? XI maybe? Nope, it was FFIII.

Since the very beginning the music has been one of the best aspects of the series. FFI's songs are pretty 8-bit but they are still catchy, but I feel II and III are well beyond their time. I often hum songs from those games as much as I do of the later CD-quality scores, and definitely much more than I do of the most recent games.

So why is that? Is it simply the magic of Uematsu that's missing from FFXII and XIII? Is it a degradation of game music in general? Or is it just another sign that I'm getting older?

[Jiro]

It's probably not that you're getting older. I think it's just that there music isn't as high a priority.

[Dreddz]

Gonna have to respectfully disagree. FFI, II and III's soundtracks are well ahead of their time but it wasn't till IV that Uematsu had sound equipment to effectively produce a catchy meoldy. The PSX ports of I and II did do something to help that. I am fond of FFII's world map theme.

[nik0tine]

So why is that? Is it simply the magic of Uematsu that's missing from FFXII and XIII? Is it a degradation of game music in general? Or is it just another sign that I'm getting older?

It is precisely the degradation of game music in general. Uematsu is an artist before he is a VGM composer. On the contrary, most of todays VGM composers are, at the very best, good craftsman (but really, they are just businessmen, and it shows).

Even though video game music is supposed to act as an accompaniment, good music will always transcend that and that is exactly what Uematsus music does. If you take away the game you are left with music that stands by itself as music. This music will speak to anyone, young or old, even if they have no idea that it was written for a video game.
Contrast this with the composers of today and you will see a vastly different scenario. If you remove the compositions from the game you are left with nothing but professionally orchestrated, professionally composed prefabricated ambient noise. I'll take Uematsus beeps over that any day.

I long for the 'good old days' when composers (and to an extent games in general) did not sacrifice their integrity for a quick dollar.

Gonna have to respectfully disagree. FFI, II and III's soundtracks are well ahead of their time but it wasn't till IV that Uematsu had sound equipment to effectively produce a catchy meoldy.

A catchy melody will always be catchy, whether it is sung, played on a piano, orchestrated, or played with 8-bit beeps. The relationship between the notes is what makes a melody catchy, not the ensemble it is performed on.

[Fynn]

I think calling it a degradation is getting way ahead of yourself. Catchy music does not equal good music, I'm afraid. I have great respect for Uematsu's work and I adore each and every one of his works. But I do not think the older music is of greater quality. Still, for me to consider a track of music good, I need more than just a catchy melody. FFXII lacked it, but it was still very enjoyable. While I'm at that, FFXIII's OST blew my mind. What I found the best in this music is that Hamauzu is not afraid to experiment. He is no stranger to new harmonies, dissonance, electronica and modern conventions. Ragnarok may not be so pleasant to the ear, but that is one hell of ambitious 20th century music. I think with the newer entries, the music was allowed to blossom into whole new fields of music - cinematic, movie music in XII and artistic, ambitious music in XIII.

[rubah]

When all you have is stupid beeps and bips, it behooves you to make up for it with musicality. FFIII's music is just amazing, anyway~ Lute of Noah is my text ringtone, and contrary to what Dreddz might have you believe, it's the NES version, not the DS's reimagining with real instruments and fancy sound equipment~

(although orchestral The Dark Crystal? gooooooooooooooooooooorgeous)

With 8-bit music, half of the inspiration is trying to achieve something memorable despite the medium. Same thing goes for pixel artists. In fact, one pixel artist who has done backgrounds for a few DS games, Henk Nieborg, I'd guess, does for pixels what Uematsu did for music. Any hack can create something that looks or sounds pretty, but an artist gives their creation soul.

Just need an excited person who enjoys a challenge to come up to the plate. It's foolish to expect an established, mature franchise like Final Fantasy to hire someone like that, or, if they have, give them the breathing room to excel.

[VeloZer0]

If you remove the compositions from the game you are left with nothing but professionally orchestrated, professionally composed prefabricated ambient noise. I'll take Uematsus beeps over that any day.

I think you hit the nail on the head with the composed ambient noise. Nowadays the sound is there to help be the background and help flash out the scene. Back in the day the graphics were so primitive the music was necessary to set the scene, and thus had to appear much more in the fore front.

For instance, in FF10 the only 'dungeon' that ever left a lasting impression on me was the last trudge up into Zanarkand. And I strongly feel that it would have had far less impact if the music wasn't put so far to the forefront.

[Slothy]

I disagree with the idea that music in games has somehow gotten worse or that it's all just ambient noise these days. There are still plenty of games with strong soundtracks that I'd hold up there as enjoying just as much as some of my favourite older soundtracks, even some which are meant to be more ambient. I think one thing people tend to forget is that there was plenty of really bad music on older consoles too which no one ever remembers. Comparing the average game soundtrack of today to the best of the 8-bit and 16-bit era is like comparing Led Zeppelin to some 14 year old kids with 3 months of playing a instrument under their belt jamming in their garge. If you want to compare this generation as a whole, then compare it to prior generations as a whole.

That said, there are some very good reasons that the older stuff could seem more memorable, and I don't think it's because music was intentionally more at the forefront in older games to help set the scene. Taking the NES as an example, it had five sound channels. That's five sound channels to play both music and all of the sound effects (which is why you sometimes run into cases in games where the music drops out if too many sound effects are playing at once). Those five channels also had a grand total of 16 levels of volume control at best, and one at their worst. If all they had to worry about was music this would still be a pretty limited sound chip. But when you have to start working around sound effects too then the orchestrations you can use are understandably limited. As a result, the focus was much more on creating strong melodies for pretty much everything, and humans are just predisposed to remember good melody more than any other part of a song.

Naturally, as the hardware improved game composers were able to experiment and try a lot more. This doesn't mean there aren't still games with strong melodies. Nor does it mean that more ambient music can't stand on its own as memorable pieces from a game. It just means that the soundtracks have gotten a lot mroe diverse, and I don't see how anyone can say that is inherently a bad thing. Some games would actually suffer if they had themes with strong melodies anyway. It's not often I will attribute anything to nostalgia but I think that's kind of where this question ends up coming from. People remember the strong melodies from their youth and wonder why we don't get that anymore. Really though, we do get that AND a whole lot more.