Music is the essential, universal language. It expresses emotion, a story, and records a generation in history. In the classical and baroque era, music was written to tell a story and emphasize the emotion within that story. Music still tells stories today; movies, games, and regular songs tell stories with emphasized emotions. Games require music to set the mood and energy for specific scenarios. One such game series is the Final Fantasy series. This game series is classified as a role-playing game, which is based entirely around a detailed story. With such a complex storyline, this series calls for a wide range of music. The composer that wrote the soundtrack, Nobuo Uematsu was the perfect composer to convey the events of each story to the players. Since the types of players are so broad, Uematsu had to describe each story event with an exaggerated theme. To each player that has experienced Final Fantasy, hearing a song from the game will instantly take the player back to a memory of whatever event that song describes. Nobuo Uematsu composed the original soundtrack of the first Final Fantasy and finished his part in the series with the tenth installment of Final Fantasy. From there, a number of other composers were drafted with the responsibility of continuing the extreme emotional connections between the games and the players through the music. Masashi Hamauzu was the first successor of Nobuo Uematsu and began his career collaborating with Uematsu in Final Fantasy X. Hamauzu’s style was more sincere and ominous compared to Uematsu’s style, which was more harmonically pleasing and upbeat. This combination of different styles of composition made Final Fantasy X the most dramatic and emotional installment. Every Final Fantasy has a main theme song that relates to every event of the storyline. These correlations include chord progressions related to the world, timeline, events, and characters of each Final Fantasy. The older generation Final Fantasy games, which are I-IX, use digitized instruments and midi sequencing to precisely get every pitch and harmony correct. This made Nobuo Uematsu’s job easier to create a vast range of moods. The newer generation Final Fantasy games include instrumentation performed by bands, singers, and entire orchestras. Masashi Hamauzu used recorded instrumentation to convey deeper emotional connections based on Uematsu’s original compositions. These complete orchestrations complimented the more advanced technology used in the development of the newer Final Fantasy installments to create deeper, more engaging events and scenarios. Nobuo Uematsu’s pieces directly connect his life with
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Final Fantasy XIII is the thirteenth main installment, which includes various composers and artists to emphasize a complex, flourishing storyline based on the series’ original subject, crystals. The launch of Final Fantasy XIII was originally titled Fabula Nova Crystalis or “New Tale of the Crystal” because it was theorized to be a reboot of the original Final Fantasy games. Because of technological advances in the development of games, Masashi Hamauzu was the perfect choice for the lead designer. Although Hamauzu was not the only composer, his role in the composition of the soundtrack was crucial to illustrate the vivid environments and crystalline details through his music. Final Fantasy XIII’s soundtrack is composed entirely of recorded orchestration; lucid violins, heavy brass, and suspenseful percussion are heard throughout the storyline to convey the multiple extreme emotions and scenarios to the
Final Fantasy XIII is the thirteenth main installment, which includes various composers and artists to emphasize a complex, flourishing storyline based on the series’ original subject, crystals. The launch of Final Fantasy XIII was originally titled Fabula Nova Crystalis or “New Tale of the Crystal” because it was theorized to be a reboot of the original Final Fantasy games. Because of technological advances in the development of games, Masashi Hamauzu was the perfect choice for the lead designer. Although Hamauzu was not the only composer, his role in the composition of the soundtrack was crucial to illustrate the vivid environments and crystalline details through his music. Final Fantasy XIII’s soundtrack is composed entirely of recorded orchestration; lucid violins, heavy brass, and suspenseful percussion are heard throughout the storyline to convey the multiple extreme emotions and scenarios to the