Rogue Keeper on 25/2/2009 at 09:22
The original dark ambient (which I'm fan of anyway) using backround samples of keyboard typing, tribal vocals, bells, radio communication and other stuff... is so much more interesting to audially support and complement the environment you are in, because that's what electronic ambient music has been invented for in the first place.
Look at it this way : let's say you never played ANY Fallout game before, so you can't have conscious associations. You play Morgan's ambient track and I'm almost sure it does a better job of evoking you images of desolate land, some hi-tech installation, dead city or a tribal village, than the much more ambiguous Inon Zhur's compositions will able to. Morgan's tracks are so much more audially rich and varied, because most tracks have been composed for specific locations and that also makes them more memorable. Even Fallout Tactics music was better in this aspect. In F3 there are your "generic exploration tracks", "generic public tracks", "generic dungeon tracks" and "generic military base tracks." Well thanks much for this kind of highly sophisticated compositional variability!
Call it nostalgia if you want, but if it's called Fallout 3 and pretends to be a proper sequel, fans of the series are fully justified to expect it to meet various high standards as they have been defined in the series before and that includes atmospheric music. Instead, they are once again forced to adapt themselves to the current prevailing trend of orchestral soundtracks, which are supposed to sound megalomaniacally epic and cinematic, but often they sound shallow or at times even cheesy. All my ten are for technical progress if it makes sense, but this is not a step forward, it's step sideways.
Aja on 25/2/2009 at 10:06
I like the FO3 tracks because they're ambiguous. They simultaneously evoke feelings of desolation, hope, mysticism, and so on. What you call generic I call subtle. A single FO3 track often encompasses the sensations of several of the originals. Which isn't to say you don't still get specific themes -- the Megaton music is just as distinctive as anything from the first soundtrack.
But what we're doing now is ascribing way more value to either of these soundtracks then they actually have. You don't have to lecture me on ambient music -- I'm probably the biggest enthusiast of the genre on this board, hence my somewhat embarrassing readiness to indulge in these threads. And I know that if you want good, original ambient music that truly evokes a sense of time and place, there are far better venues than the Fallout series to which you should turn. As it goes, though, the average fallout fan's unwillingness to embrace the new soundtrack is simply unfounded. It's different, but hardly worse.
Rogue Keeper on 25/2/2009 at 10:14
Don't you dare to lecture me on what an average Fallout fan is, because since you haven't been one before, you can't have a proper idea! :mad:
Ok, we can settle on the point that musical tastes are different. That itself is a good reason why people swap music tracks and don't eat everything they get. :)
Jason Moyer on 25/2/2009 at 11:32
I dunno why you'd want to substitute the FO3 soundtrack for the originals when you could just use the actual Aphex Twin tracks he plagiarized.
Toxicfluff on 25/2/2009 at 14:37
Quote Posted by Renzatic
At the risk of sounding corny here, I'd say most people didn't warm to the FO3 soundtrack because it fails to capture the feeling of loneliness and desolation as well as its predecessors. It made for nice background music, but the tracks in FO1 and 2 really put you in the moment.
Maybe for you they did. With the exception of a few tracks they drove me to straight through boredem to f**king despair. Even with the decent ones, I had to turn the music off. New Reno.... uuuuuuuuuuggh.
F3's tracks were too twee for me though, so I replaced them all with other stuff. It's not the instrumentation, but in many tracks the actual music itself has a tincture of mystical fantasy that grates against the setting of the game. That is one thing about the tracks in the predecessors - can't argue they didn't suit the tone.
bedwine on 2/3/2009 at 23:43
Is it true that Bethesda is giving owners a free editor for Fallout Three? Something called GECK?
Cardia on 3/3/2009 at 15:40
Has anyone played S.T.A.L.K.E.R. ? well i did recently , and if anyone played as well, then it should know that is a game that also consist in fallout zones with chaotich landscapes, where these enviroment are reforced with more expressivity with and excelent electronic dark ambient soundtrack, because for dangerous places we expect to hear a melody that evoke us something bad, right? now what reminds us Fallout 3 soundtrack? i tell you, a beautifull garden with people running hand with hand in the grass with birds flying around them and...and that´s why i enjoyed Oblivion 4 soundtrack, because it really fits with its scenarys and its enviroments, Fallout as a good ambient sounds( wind, thins being cracked...etc.) but as for the ambient music(soundtrack) i had to replace it for electronic musics that fits well in chaotic places, isolation, melancholy ,dangerous..etc. wich is how we can define the world in Fallout 3.
Ostriig on 3/3/2009 at 17:41
Dude, take a little extra time and polish your posts, it'll pay off. No one expects the level of a Cambridge ZylonBane English certificate, but that post is all over the place. Anyway -
Quote Posted by cardia1
now what reminds us Fallout 3 soundtrack? i tell you, a beautifull garden with people running hand with hand in the grass with birds flyig around them and...
Now, I agree that Fallout 3's music might've missed the mark a fair bit, but I most definitely wouldn't call it edenic. My problem with it is that instead of conveying a feeling of oppressive loneliness, it most often strikes me as
bored loneliness, but birds chirping and naturist frolicking is something that didn't get across to me.
Rogue Keeper on 3/3/2009 at 17:44
Oblivion music was edenic! <3
