Board 8 > [VGMC] Day 89! THEMEX/Argon Refinery, Sky Tower/Breath of Forest

(+) Yeah! (+)

THEMEX
Breath of Forest

Video game music inherently exists within some kind of context, and how the songs are composed to fit that context can vary a great deal. Some composers take the approach to have the music support the scene as a foil to highlight it. Some settle for making songs that merely fit. Some ignore the question entirely and make a song that happens to be used in a game, with little tying them together besides circumstance. And some strive to make a track that *defines* the context, being so emotive or powerful that the game seems to merely serve to complement the music. Pulling that off is no mean feat, and it's especially difficult to do it with a dramatic or climatic song, which can all too easily come across as tryhard or cheesy. THEMEX is among the proud few, like the best of MGS themes, that can tell a story and deliver passion all on its own.

Trance is often seen as a fairly static genre. It has very well-defined tropes and the songs themselves are often repetitive, and it gets to the point where you feel if you've heard one, you've heard them all. Argon Refinery, when looked at reductively, seems to be a pretty straightforward example. When you actually listen, however, it doesn't feel that way at all. The song always progresses, moving from one idea to the next, never settling on any phrase for so long it gets stale but keeping a strong continuity. I'll describe it as "industrial", not merely in the sense that it's driving and steady, but in how listening to it is like watching something be constructed, discrete part by discrete part into a greater gestalt. When the song is finished, you feel as though you've done work and accomplished some meaningful task.

Sky Tower is the ideal of the glory of height; any metaphor made about ascending to glory or reaching the stars or soaring to GREATER HEIGHTS is distilled and exemplified by this song. It's relentless, constantly urging you on to follow your dreams, that you can't give up, that's you're *so close* and that actualization is within your reach. It's the end of a journey in the purest sense, the sense that not only are you almost done, you've almost *won*, succeeded at what you always knew to be possible. You're exhausted, you can't take another step... and then you hear that simple series of climbing notes and grasp victory.

It's perhaps the most fun in the context. Some songs made you want to dance, some made you want to sing, but Breat of Forest makes you want to *run*. It's incredible nobody made a beat-platformer before, because so much music gets its power from making you want to move. What better way to take advantage of that than a genre about moving (besides having you literally dance to play but shush). Why then, does this song make you want to dash instead of dance? It has stakes. No song that's made it this far is single-minded, and this pushes you not in circle but forwards, making you competitive, making you *need* to outrun everybody else and finish first. It's the atavistic joy of moving and tension of competition and the catharsis of having given the race your all.

Argon
Sky

Argon Refinery
Breath of Forest

Argon Refinery
Breath of Forest

Argon Refinery
Breath of Forest

Argon Refinery
Sky Tower