Quote Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno View Post
Music:
Can we let music be important again? I mean I'm sorry but while XII and XIII do have some gorgeous tracks, outside of being ambient noise for dungeons and the battle themes, the music just lost it's spark as a narrative focus. This genre used to live and die on the quality of its music and games like FFIV, VI, VII, and IX have their most dramatic moments helped by the strong soundtracks they have. I blame Voice acting for causing this problem but here's an idea, can I just choose not to have voices. I can still read and it might make the silly subject matter feel more serious if I don't have to hear it out loud. That way, you can tell your composers to write some beautiful music again that really helps set the mood of the scenes and feel like a part of them. I want to start humming themes again while I play.
Completely agree with this. I only actually realised how good the soundtrack of FFXIII was once I heard them in YouTube, because I completely zoned out the music throughout much of the game. Make the music go loud whenever characters aren't talking, minimise the sound effects so they don't overpower the music (I think footsteps and other sound effects actually have an even more negative impact on the music than voiceovers), stuff like that. And while I don't mind voice acting being kept in, it doesn't mean you can't have silent scenes where the music takes over. Let's put it this way: If VII had voice acting, the Aeris death scene (the best music for a scene ever in my opinion, and I don't even like Aeris) would still be nothing but music. The music makes the scene, not the other way around.

At least XIII-2 had the music more prominent, but it was also very repetitive since the majority of songs were all based on Serah's theme. A step in the right direction, though.