I’ve been thinking all day of how to best put my thoughts into words after listening to the menu music on repeat during my 12 hour shift. But I think I figured it out.
For a game titled “Infinite” a lot of this music sounds incredibly finite, almost like and end to an era. The overall theme of the music starts by coming across as an respectful homage to a once great and powerful moment in time, gentle as to ease you into a sense of somber nostalgia of what stood before it.
It then grows with a vivacious candor into something sure of itself, hiking in the footsteps of the steep wooded mountain path traveled decades ago leading somewhere familiar yet distantly enigmatic.
When the symphonic trail opens up to the final destination atop the mountain peak, it takes on an almost eulogistic tone. Its emotional tone triggers a state of remembrance, like looking upon a memorial set before you in honor of what came before it.
Just before you’re about to lose yourself in the lachrymose monument, the music shifts. It reminds you that just because the story the monument of sound had created is over, doesn’t mean your own story is. It was merely a starting point to the Great Journey forged ahead of you by the warriors that fought long ago. The battles and hardships fought through over decades led to this point, and there is so much more to follow.
I’m letting the sound of the music run my speculation wild, but to me, the music weaves the end of the Master Chief’s story. The closing chapter of the legendary warrior we’ve grown up with through all the highs and lows of two decades. It’s a eulogy, but not one without purpose. Seeing our own Spartan standing there new on base, sure footed but slightly visibly unsure, yet eager of what’s to come, blazing the trails set forth by the Giant that came before them. The music doesn’t end on a sad note, but one of intrigue, not sure of what the future holds, but preparing you for whatever journey it brings.
And I’m so very ready for that journey.
Thank you 343, the music crafted for this experience is exquisite. Calling respectfully back to Bungie’s scores, but also crafting something nostalgically unique in the process. This score understands the importance of music, a symphonic history in which it stands proudly in a lineage right where it belongs. I’m impatiently eager for the full soundtrack.