This post has been edited by a moderator. Please do not create alternate accounts to bypass forum bans. Alternate accounts will be permanently banned, and offending users will be subject to both temporary and permanent bans.
*Original post. Click at your own discretion.
Hey all, this is my first post so please forgive if this has been already over discussed. I feel as if Halo 4’s soundtrack was good, but overall on the underwhelming side. I will admit right away that im a sucker for nostalgia. But i think that it just wasn’t very Halo sounding. The music Marty created for the original trilogy was amazing in intensity, scope, alien sound, emotion, and is simply put - unlike any other music ive heard in games or movies. Ive played Halo music for people who aren’t even Halo fans and they can still tell its Halo.
I feel as if a game or movies’ music can make or break a series. If done right it can give incredible depth and weight. The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars movies being another perfect example, while they would’ve still been amazing without its key themes, they wouldn’t have been remotely as memorable without them.
When i play Halo i think of four different types of themes.
- The action pieces
- The spacey, alien themes, the themes that give the Halo universe its mystery, scope, and wonder
- the staff credit themes (more important than people might think, its this theme that gives closure to the whole experience, and at least with me often is one of my future key memories of Halo)
- the emotional pieces (my personal favourites), these themes give a very personal connection to the situations, the characters. They too give a sense of realism and believability (as much as a sci fi universe can have)
The action pieces in bungie’s games were awesome, you think of themes like Halo. CE’s Under Cover of Night, Covenant Dance. The second half of Halo 2’s Ghosts of Reach or Reclaimer guitar theme or Blow me Away, Halo 3’s Infiltrate or This is our land, ODST’s Assault on the Skyline and The Menagerie, and Reach’s Overture or Nightfall. Halo 4 i think actually did not too bad with these themes, i personally think the songs Faithless, and the Didact’s theme to be quite good. But at times it feels as though some of them would feel more right in a transformer or die hard movie. These themes are important but there not the themes that overall defined Halo.
The spacey, alien themes are ultra important to a proper Halo experience. I think of Halo CE’s The Maw, Halo 2 had a treasure trove of these - High Charity, Orbit of Glass, Cairo Suite, In Amber Clad, Halo 3 also had many of these such as Brutes, Luck, and Halo Reborn (one of the most memorable), Halo Reach didn’t have as many of these as it was based on familiar human territory as opposed to alien worlds and ruins.
The staff credit themes for me are also mega important, i remember each credit theme specifically and the experience and emotions running through me each time i finished a Halo game. With Halo CE is was the main theme, all the way through (aside from a 30 second piano bit right at the end) it was just pure awesome and you know you were all thinking HELL YEAH HALO!, with Halo 2 it was very different - the scale of Halo increased dramatically, the war found its way to Earth and everything became much more personal resulting in a very somber almost sad credit roll. (and no not because of the mega cliffhanger we all remember) but it was hopeful music in the sense you know MC would one day have another outing and you’d finish all this. Halo 3’s credit roll was one of the most amazing, exhilarating, and sad moments ive had in games, movies, books or any form of media. Halo 3’s Roll Call was everything Halo we ever experienced at that time in a nutshell. It had the classic Halo chant that gave an “I did it - its over” feeling that then moved to one to some of the series most memorable action themes played together (in amber clad and ghost of reach) again giving you that HELL YEAH feeling. Then suddenly it changed, it became very sad, very somber, you start to realise - we might not ever see Chief again, that billions have died on all sides all over the galaxy, that we lost good people like Miranda and Sgt Johnson, that we just spent the better part of ten years of our lives fighting this conflict and that it was hell, it was bloody, but its over. The song then drifts into closing piano which can bring tears to my eyes still - now more than ever as we soon after realized that H3 was Bungie’s last time they would send the chief on another adventure as that mantle eventually passed to 343. Roll Call is almost like a sendoff and Bungie’s personal thank you to the experiences we all shared. A truly remarkable moment - i even listened to Roll Call on my way home on my last day of high school - it felt fitting. Halo reach’s credit theme was more action based but still went somber in making you remember reach, and everyone that died on that world. These themes are how i remember each particular Halo era.
The sad emotional themes. These are IMO where Halo separated themselves from any other game even now. I feel they are the most important to Halo. But i also feel its where Halo 4 failed. H4 had one good theme in this regard which was Green and Blue - Cortana’s death theme. These themes make you realize that these wars cost the lives of billions, and even more are at stake. You remember people like Sgt Johnson, Captain Keyes, Miranda, and even some like FoeHammer and Jenkins. The great schism - playing as the arbiter seeing your brethren massacred by the brutes and prophets. It gives weight to the game, seriousness, consequence. It really becomes more than a mere game at this point. In Halo CE they didn’t have as many of these as it was still finding itself. About 4:33 into Truth and Reconciliation does Halo CE start this (which was also redone in Halo 3’s Behold a Pale Horse), Halo 2 really started to figure out where the series was going and what kind of tone it would take. Themes like Remembrance, and Heavy Price Paid (one i know everyone remembers well). Halo 3 expanded on this with Tribute, Never forget, the beginning of Greatest Journey (Johnson’s death), and Wake me when you need me. ODST continued with one of Halo’s most underated and unheard themes Deference for Darkness (listen to it and you’ll see what i mean). Halo Reach had a pretty large portion of these themes as it was Halo’s equivalent of the Alamo. Reach brought tunes like Ashes (Kat’s death), bits of New Alexandria, and Ghosts and Glass. Even if we don’t remember these songs specifically, we all remember the moments in game and the emotions they brought.
Halo 4’s soundtrack was good, don’t get me wrong. It just brought a different feeling entirely. And yes i know that that was the aim. But it in turn (for me anyways) was too much of a change. Its action wasn’t as intensifying, its horror really non existent (i understand - no flood), its mystery and sco