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I'll save this question for when Casen gets back! He's sick today.

Resonant Arc

I'll save this question for when Casen gets back! He's sick today.

Resonant Arc

When I think of melody vs. atmosphere, I Am Setsuna comes to mind. I finished the game a couple of weeks ago and I enjoyed the piano-only soundtrack. It fit well with the SNES-styled aesthetic of the game along with the winter setting. Unfortunately, I cannot remember a single melody from I Am Setsuna. Contrast that with Final Fantasy 7, and I can hum the entirety of Cid's Theme right now even though I haven't played FF7 in over a year.

I have a more general question if there's space for it this week. So much of the JRPG genre is predicated on conflict equaling combat in storytelling. Games that are fairly light on combat or have none at all are generally labelled puzzle games or put aside into a separate genre. How could a studio build an immersive RPG without combat, and without essentially writing a visual novel that's just dialog with a few branching pathways? What meaningful challenges would make a game like this complete in terms of gameplay?

Mainline Final Fantasy games have traditionally had heavily melodic soundtracks while games like The Elder Scrolls series have much more atmospheric soundtracks. And then there's stuff like Mass Effect and Metroid Prime which fall somewhere in between atmospheric and melodic. I'd like to know what, in your opinion, calls for an atmospheric soundtrack over a more melodic soundtrack or vice versa.

Ooh very interesting topic - Here are some possible thoughts/questions for you (which you may already have planned to discuss): * People seem to disagree about how to define "melodic" music - some seem to just mean "I like it" while others means "has a melody line of some kind" while others (like me) mean "hook driven, hummable, memorable after only a few listens" - how do you define "melodic"? * How intertwined is appreciation of music with its original context for you? Have you ever hated a piece of music out of its context, only to fall in love with it when you finally experienced it in it's proper place? Or vice versa - have you ever hated music in its context, but learned to love it afterward? For example, "Mines of Narshe" is a song I didn't really care for in game, but now I love just listening to it. * Have you ever felt that a song's melody was TOO intrusive/attention-grabbing/distracting, even though you really liked the melody and would enjoy listening to it in another context? I feel like this is theoretically possible, but I can't recall ever feeling this way a single time. * Do you ever get offended when a composer labels a piece as a character's "theme" when you can't remember it five seconds after you've heard it? Like "Hope's Theme" - remember that one? No? I didn't think so.

Very cool topic! A question I thought may be interesting for you guys to cover involves the idea of VR. If Virtual Reality does become mainstream in gaming, what types of experiences would you both like to see in it that you feel is unique to/improved by the medium?