Doublehex
09-05-2012, 01:53 AM



https://mega.co.nz/#!DEhRCDjI!Nh6ozHEZAyGeUPp9PNEIThTqUboqU7eDsycwHxV y7OE
1. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Overture (1:32)
2. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - The Seraph (3:13)
3. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Bear's Spirit (4:26)
4. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Call of the Raven (2:55)
5. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Out of the Dream (2:21)
6. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Heritage of Humanity (1:59)
7. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Snaff's Workshop (2:22)
8. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Eir's Solitude (2:12)
9. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - The Walls of Ebonhawke (2:23)
10. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Battle with the Tamini (2:30)
11. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - The Sea of Sorrows (2:30)
12. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - The Vigil Goes to War (2:37)
13. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Mepi's Ranch (2:13)
14. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Legion of Flames (0:43)
15. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Farren's Theme (1:02)
16. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Ruins of an Empire (2:09)
17. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Ventari's Legacy (1:57)
18. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Tears of Stars (1:14)
19. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Logan's Journey (2:34)
20. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Tyria Reborn (4:09)
21. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Tyria Awaits (3:04)
22. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Farahr (2:43)
23. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - The Tengu Wall (2:14)
24. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Zhaitan (2:32)
25. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Lornar's Pass (2:45)
26. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Dawn in Shaemoor (2:40)
27. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Fallen Comrades (0:37)
28. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Straits of Devastation (3:23)
29. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Kormir's Whispers (1:56)
30. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Shadow of the Behemoth (0:34)
31. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Zojja and Mr. Sparkles (1:51)
32. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Michoti Battle March (2:18)
33. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Smodur the Unflinching (2:24)
34. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - The Darkness Will Fall (2:15)
35. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Change Versus Comfort (0:34)
36. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - A Land Restored (2:37)
37. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Explorers and Artifacts (2:16)
38. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - The Shiverpeaks (4:14)
39. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Plains of Ashford (2:16)
40. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Sunrise Over Astorea (2:14)
41. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Blighted Battleground (2:21)
42. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Rytlock (2:41)
43. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Hero's Canton (2:47)
44. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Journey Through Caledon (2:15)
45. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Melandru's Calm (2:09)
46. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - The Stars Shine on Kryta (1:39)
47. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - The Saga of the Norn (2:27)
48. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - The Last Great City of Men (2:49)
49. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - The Great Wall Has Fallen (4:37)
50. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Gendarran Fields (2:42)
51. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Bandits' Expanse (2:19)
52. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Almora's Revelation (1:44)
53. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Battle of the Vanguard (2:22)
54. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Caithe's Daggers (3:03)
55. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - The Grand Gamble (3:18)
56. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Promenade of the Gods (3:04)
57. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Hope Falls (2:38)
58. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - The Vaults of the Priory (2:03)
59. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Knight of Embers (3:13)
60. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - The Charr Triumphant (2:14)
61. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - The Orders Unite (3:11)
62. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Raven Speaks (3:57)
63. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Journey to the Mists (2:20)
64. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Once Friends Now Enemies (2:34)
65. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Of Tides and Quaggan (2:14)
66. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Whispers in the Dark (1:38)
67. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - The Pact (1:51)
68. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Adelbern's Ghost (2:25)
69. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - The Hammer Falls (2:00)
70. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - The Heart of Rata Sum (1:37)
71. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - We Fight! (2:21)
72. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Malchor's Leap (2:12)
73. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Sparkfly Fen (3:32)
74. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - March of the Legions (2:43)
75. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Here be Dragons (1:46)
76. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Scales of Issormir (2:13)
77. Jeremy Soule & Julian Soule - Trahearne's Reverie (1:15)
78. Asja Kadric - Fear Not This Night (5:02)
79. Jeremy Soule - Overture (Piano Theme) (1:30)
So here is a little something that I know we have all been waiting for (well, most of us, at least), and I think I can say with a certain amount of faith that it was well worth the wait. Now the game is, of course, fantastic. Anyone who has played the game and is of sound mind can attest to that. However, just because a game is good does not mean the music is. If the Goldsmith Effect is to have any weight, there is the fear that the better the game/movie/tv show is, the worse the music accompanying it will be. But Jeremy Soule is a composer with a certain amount of recognition and respect from within the industry - some would call him the John Williams of Video Games. I certainly would not go anywhere close to such claim - John Williams has never written a boring note in his life (his cantina cue from Star Wars was the closest he ever came to that) and Soule has a record of just downright boring soundtracks. I'd say from 2004-2010 his music was downright identical, and overall, nothing really worth talking about. KOTOR, Oblivion, the vast majority of the original Guild Wars, were all just rather bleh and uninspired. Now, some gems did arise from the muck, such as Supreme Commander and it's expansion pack Forged Alliance, Guild Wars' expansion Eye of the North, IL-2 Sturmovik, and Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.
However, with the fifth Elder Scrolls game Skyrim, something interesting happened. Soule started to get good again. But not just "Oh, this is kind of interesting" good. No, really good. Hummable themes good. Themes that you reacted to whenever you heard them. Soule started to write like he was early on in his career, with Total Annihilation, Icewind Dale and Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War. But Skyrim was still a little off, to me personally. I could say that it was a good score - or, at least well worth the $35 I paid for it - but it was missing something. Skyrim was a very atmospheric score. Not ambient - ambient is music that sets a tone with no emotions. But it was very hard to recall individual cues, in terms of notes. The main theme and battle cues aside, you couldn't directly say "I remember that!" It was a very slow, melodic work.
Then came Mists of Pandaria - he wasn't the sole composer, but he did write nearly an hours worth of music. The OST has yet to be released, but my nearly complete gamerip was - check it out (Thread 119341). Soule wrote some of the biggest stand out pieces from that score, and even better his music wasn't indentical in style like his other music was. It was unique and fresh, but it still had his touch on it. Just listen to Ride the Serpent - or this YouTube mirror (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGDBAxbClFs). You can tell it's Soule as soon as you take a listen to it. But it is also so radically different from anything else he has ever written. And it's so damn catchy too! You can listen to it once, and when you take a listen a second time you start humming around.
Now we come to the main attraction; Guild Wars 2. This is the music we have been waiting for ever since A.Net started putting out those racial trailers. The moment we heard the human, norn and charr themes, nearly everyone was unanimous: I need to hear more. So now we have the full package: three hours of music. What is there to say?
Mother of God, Soule, please write more like this.
Now now, I have to admit that I have a certain amount of bias here. I have been waiting for this game for three years. I registered a site for a roleplaying guild more than a year ago and have been waiting eagerly to get the story rolling for that ever since. I have eaten up every news post, looked at every convention footage, and stared down every interview I could get my hands on. So when I give such unanimous praise to the score for the game, it is not 100% done with objectivity. However, in my honest to God opinion, this is great music. This is music that envelops you into Tyria; but this is also music with a personality too! The Big Orchestra Thread has been clamoring for years that the very best scores are those that have both a great deal of intellectual layers that are so prominent in modern Classical, and emotional depth that current Hollywood scores are catering to exclusively nowadays. I believe that Guild Wars 2 has both.
Now I could take about each o the individual cues and themes that make up this score, but I won’t because this will start to look more like a college thesis and less as my personal thoughts on the music. So, let’s just go with the big cues. First off, the main themes of the races – “Out of the Dream”, “Heritage of Humanity”, “Snaff's Workshop”, “The Saga of the Norn”, and “The Charr Triumphant”. They are rich, expressive in tone and style, and perfectly reflect the races that they symbolize.
“Out of the Dream” has slow, melodic pacing that is very reminiscent of Skyrim, but strings play an added importance to the theme. It deals specifically with the sylvari’s naivet� and their entering of the world. The sylvari are only twenty five years old, as a species, and the theme talks about their childlike sense of wonder. There is a slight use of synthesizer at the beginning, but the rest of the piece is dominated with harp, other mysterious (to me) string instruments and a voiceless chorus towards the end.
If the sylvari theme represents the sylvari entering the world, “Heritage of Humanity” represents the human’s stubbornness in becoming less relevant. “Humanity” is full of a dozen different instruments that are symbolic with an epic orchestra. Soule makes use of the full array of instruments in an orchestra to talk about the large history of the humans. The piece starts off with thoughtful strings detailing the humans’ long history, then horns take over talking about their slight militaristic persona. The strings and percussion unite together right around the middle, signifying how these two aspects are directly intertwined in the human zeitgeist. Then the music fades and then abruptly ends, talking about the inevitable nihilistic conclusion of the humans in Tyria.
“Snaff’s Workshop” begins with some playful strings, and they are ever present throughout the theme. The asura in Guild Wars 2 are displayed as something of bitter comic relief characters, with the writers using their arrogant (but apparent as day) intellect to comedic effects. The playful strings often partner with strings that are long and elegant, speaking of the asura superiority complex.
We talked about the humans earlier – now it is time to talk about the charr. “The Charr Triumphant” talks about the Spartans in the Fantasy Industrial Age that is the race’s concept. The charr are all about turning the war machine; cubs are taken from their parents to be raised in individual warbands that are each attached to one of the three Legions that make up the military and political leaders of the race. They are marvelous inventors, but all of their advances deal strictly with furthering the war efforts. Years ago, it was against the humans of Ebonhawke. Now it is against the Elder Dragons.
Back on track with the theme, “Charr” makes use of dissonance (”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissonance_(music)#Dissonance”) to speak about the “horrors” of the charr war machine. I am speaking specifically about the note arrangement beginning at the 0:40 segment. Large horns and rapid drum lines are the main cornerstones of the theme, and if one were to say it was the motif of the villain one would not be surprised. It is an interesting contrast to have arrangements so often used with bad guys for a morally ambiguous race. Chances are this was a reference to the charr’s roles as villains in Guild Wars: Prophecies and Eye of the North.
Pardon me for saying that, as a player who favors the norn, the norn theme is without a doubt the best theme of them all. The norn are essentially Beowulf turned into an entire species of half giants, and the theme reflects that. We start out with loud, boisterous fanfare and slight synthesized chorus before we enter tightened strings and percussion done at a furious pace. This leads us into the heart of the theme with heightened horn usage and a great sense of pacing as Soule makes use of drums, strings, percussion and chorus to create a great heroic cue. The norn represent unbiased heroism and a sense of adventure, as does their theme.
The cues that accompany the players travelling the world are the hallmarks of the score, and it is the music that the players will hear the most. “Logan’s Journey” is Soule’s answer to the first Shore’s “Fellowship theme” from “The Fellowship of the Ring”. It just screams the adventurous spirit that makes up every Tyrian hero. “A Land Restored” is a requiem to fallen Ascalon and tells of the price the charr have paid for taking back their stolen homeland.
There is also several combat cues, but for the most part this is the low point. After Icewind Dale, Soule never could understand the concept of a great action piece. “Blighted Battleground” is supposed to say something about the horrors of the Elder Dragon that the players face against, but it just comes off as overly slow. Soule makes use of rapid horn blasts to poor effect, and the chorus comes off as forced and uneven.
However, there are a few battle cues that just shine. “The Seraph” is a fantastic use of chorus to accentuate a battle rhythm, and “Scales of Issomir” (which was famously used in the Gamescom 2011 trailer) is some of the most thrilling chorus based action music this year. That doesn’t change the fact that for the most part you are better off with just replacing the battle music, albeit still using some of the better action cues.
Now, I have given you a page and a half of accolades. It’s time for me to be reasonable now. There are flaws, albeit just a few. The one that is the most prevalent is how Soule writes these sweeping, wonderful themes…and never uses them again! Now, this could be attributed to the fact that the music was used in the game not with specific areas in mind, but rather as a mood setter. However, the game does use select cues in select places, so Soule should have taken advantage of that and had some snippets of the racial themes be used in their regions. As it stands, the only time we hear the race themes are in their capital cities, which is a real shame.
Another flaw is that some of the cues do tend to be somewhat reminiscent of Skyrim in that they are more of mood setters rather than being loud, emotional pieces of music. These pieces are few and far between and are dominated by the boisterous and impactful themes, but their existence is still a hamper on the overall quality of the score.
But overall, this is a fantastic score. It continues the trend of MMO’s having some of the best music in the gaming industry – it started off with The Old Republic, continuing the trend somewhat with Tera, and then we moved onto Mists and Pandaria and are finishing off with Guild Wars 2. I hope that Guild Wars 2 is a continuing incline of quality for Soule, rather than being the finisher of a chain of great scores to precede a bunch of mediocre ones.