Faults in game soundtrack

Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne

Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne is the third main game in the JRPG series Shin Megami Tensei. In my opinion, SMT Nocturne has a very good soundtrack. The only flaw is that in-game, the quality of the soundtrack is heavily downgraded. The reasons for this are unknown, and high quality versions of the full battle themes containing all solos are nowhere to be found on the internet. In the game’s OST, only the first verses can be found in high quality.

A way to solve this is for ATLUS (the developers of the game) to release the full battle themes in high quality. They can’t add them into the game due to it being a Playstation 2 exclusive. However they did mention that they’d consider a remake of the game, which could feature high quality versions of the OST in-game.

Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood

Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood (or Sonic Chronicles) was an RPG based on the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise by Bioware and SEGA for the Nintendo DS. The soundtrack for it were MIDI placeholder songs, since Bioware’s deal with SEGA ended before they could create the full soundtrack. The only complete song in the game is the opening theme.

Similar to SMT Nocturne, this game was released for a console that cannot receive game updates. A way they could’ve fixed this was to have the composer(s) work on the complete soundtrack whilst the rest of the team worked on the other parts of the game.

Skyrim

Skyrim is the 5th game in The Elder Scrolls series by Bethesda, and has been remastered/ported to many consoles. There is a problem with the audio. When walking on snow, the walking sound is out of sync with the animations.

To fix this, workers at Bethesda could’ve walked around on snow (at the time of season), and timed the  sound with the walking.

Game Music

Game music

Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne (battle themes)

Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne (or Lucifer's Call) is the 3rd main title in the long running RPG series Shin Megami Tensei. The OST was composed by Shoji Meguro. The many themes used for battles are based on rock, mainly use an electric guitar, drums and bass, as well as demonic-like vocals. The instrument choices, in my opinion, match the environment that the game is set in, which is a post-apocalyptic version of Tokyo. The heaviness of the guitar helps to show the difficulty of the game. The vocals, when they're presented, are representing the key demons found in the game, mainly the major bosses. They also hint at the story of the game, such as the verse in the mini-boss theme "One more God rejected". An example of the fitting soundtrack is the battle theme used for towns. It starts off not as heavy as other themes, however halfway in it gets heavier to remind the player that they're in an apocalyptic world. For every type of battle, the mood of difficulty is also perfectly captured. Overall, the battle themes are created to fit the theme, story, characters and environment of the game.

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

Metal Gear Rising is a hack and slash spin off to the popular stealth series Metal Gear Solid. The soundtrack has a rock genre. The boss themes are the songs that really stand out in the soundtrack. Each boss has a different vocal theme. They each sound different from one another, mainly capturing the personality of the boss. The lyrics to the themes support this. An example is the final boss theme ‘It Has To Be This Way’, which talks about the fight is happening not by choice, but because they have to. And the rival theme ‘The Only Thing I Know For Real’, which talks about how the rival of the game can’t remember much of his past.

Persona 4

Persona 4 is another game that’s from the Shin Megami Tensei series, part of the popular spin off series known as Persona. Once again, the soundtrack does a good job at covering the enviroment. Each dungeon in the game has a specific theme, and BGM to match that theme, based on either the character’s personality or the theme of the dungeon. The battle theme ‘Reach Out To The Truth’ matches the story, as the lyrics are about finding the truth. Another example is one of the special boss themes known as ‘A New World Fool’. This theme captures the feeling that the boss gives off, after hearing his motive for doing what he did. A final example is the normal ending’s final boss theme ‘The Almighty’, which gives a feeling of accomplishment.

Audio problem assignment

Audio-based problems

An example of a fault in video game soundtrack is Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne (or Lucifer’s Call) for the Playstation 2. Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne is the 3rd entry in ATLUS’ long running Shin Megami Tensei series, released in 2003. This was the first time the PS2 had recieved a JRPG with a tone that is as dark as this games, and had a soundtrack like none other at the time, composed by Shoji Meguro. There is one problem with it’s soundtrack, however.

In-game, the soundtrack has a very low quality, especially compared to other PS2 games from around the same time. For example, this is the normal battle theme from the OST:

And this is the full version of the normal battle theme ripped from the game:

This problem only seems apparent with the normal battle theme and the town battle theme. Unfortunately, this was a problem seen with all copies of the game. The game received 2 re-releases, adding many features such as add
I managed to find this information out by using websites such as Gamefaqs and Reddit:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/582958-shin-megami-tensei-nocturne/51842100
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/582958-shin-megami-tensei-nocturne/47034676

I managed to find out that there are many reasons to why these problems happened. the two songs not being able to be fully compressed. Since ATLUS is not a big budget company, they were unable to fully compress these two songs, otherwise they would’ve had to release the game with two discs. Another reason is that there simply wasn't enough disc space left for these to be in high quality, which is another reason for them to use 2 discs. Since their budget wasn't that big at the time, using 2 discs would've been too expensive. The in-game versions of these soundtracks have more solos, only found in the in-game versions. They aren’t available on the OST release.

This problem can only be fixed through re-releases. To fix this, ATLUS could re-release the game now (with their higher budget), but with two discs, having half of the game on one disc, and the other half on the second disc. This would be the one of the few possible solution to fix the original version for its intended console, since this is a PS2 game, and only a PS2 game, meaning that the problem with the sound quality can’t be updated digitally.

Another possible solution is if they were to re-release it again, using the OST release versions of the soundtrack in-game. It would fix this audio issue, despite sacrificing the full versions of the two songs. 

Another way to solve this issue is to either fully remake the game, or to re-release the game with a remade soundtrack. Since ATLUS have a higher budget now compared to how much they had when this game was originally made, they'd be able to do either of these and manage to fit higher quality versions of both tracks.