To 343i,
I understand Halo is a constantly evolving franchise and Martin O’Donnell has his own studio now, but I personally miss the unique variety of instruments that would be at the forefront of a piece that Halo tended to have under Marty. I, and likely many more, would love to hear Marty provide one new (and last?) song for Halo.
Some more info below with extra thoughts if interested:
Personally, I enjoyed all of Halo’s soundtracks immensely. I noticed something worrying though with Halo 5 cutting down in variety. They all have fast-paced, brass heavy, loud orchestras. I get you want a ‘grand’ soundtrack, but there are far to few unique pieces in my opinion.
Halo: CE had
“Walk in the Woods”, “Halo”, “On a Pale Horse”, and “Covenant Dance”. They all had a nice unique tone, rhythm, and instrument usage.Halo 2 had
“Impend”, “In Amber Clad”, “Heavy Price Paid”, “Sacred Icon Suite”, “High Charity Suite”, “Unforgotten”, and “Epilogue”. There were also the songs with heavy electric guitar, which were interesting.Halo 3 had
“Luck”, “Released”, “Infiltrate”, “Honorable Intentions”, “Out of Shadow”, “To Kill a Demon”, “This is The Hour”, “Farthest Outpost”, “Three Gates”, “One Final Effort”, “No More Dead Heroes”, “Keep What you Steal”, “Roll Call”, “Wake Me When You Need Me”, “Choose Wisely”, “Movement”, and “Finish the Fight”. I included a lot, but I will admit certain sets of songs were similar to each other.Halo 4 had
“Requiem”, “Legacy”, “Haven”, “Solace”, “Immaterial”, “117” (the fan’s reactions to this song clearly had an effect on Halo 5’s OST), “Arrival”, “Revival”, “Green and Blue”, and “The Beauty of Cortana” (wasn’t in original release I think). Halo 4 had the smallest OST, but most of the songs were unique from each other and non-derivative so I think Neil didn’t get enough credit for that.Halo 3: ODST’s near entire OST was completely unique and a nice experiment from Marty (who probably had more freedom with this game than all others).
I can’t say anything about Halo: Reach as I haven’t listened to it in years, but the point is that Marty has always had some nice surprises, and I would appreciate if 343i surprised us with some nice unique music.