As with TV series or movies, music plays a fundamental part of a videogame experience. It helps guide our emotions to place that narrative moments can have a larger or lasting impact, drive exciting and explosive moments in combat, or just give us a solemn moment to reflect. I would also argue that videogame scores have a more difficult task as player interaction often means composers and audio artists must create adaptive music that can adjust quickly to changes in gameplay, along with having the key themes that play throughout the experience.
There are some standout soundtracks I often have playing in the background and figured I would share some of them here.
That said there are plenty of amazing examples of great videogame soundtracks. Like, a lot. With incredibly talented artists creating memorable moments in videogames, everyone has a favourite, and it would be impossible to list them all. There are some standout soundtracks I often have playing in the background and figured I would share some of them here. Of course, there’s all the amazing work by Austin Wintory, Jeremy Soule, Jessica Curry, and Jesper Kyd - so those are a given. This is also not a complete list of my favourites but rather some I just wanted to share, so no particular order, here they are:
Mass Effect
Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye
Dragon Age Inquisition
A Plague Tale: Innocence
Mirror's Edge Catalyst
Portal 2: Songs to Test By
We Are OFK
Alan Wake Score
I would also like to do a quick shout-out to some games that have tracks that instantly remind me of the title, or ones when looking at the box art a musical piece immediately springs to mind. As with the above, there are plenty, so I picked some:
- The opening theme from Outlaws.
- Nate’s Theme from the Uncharted series.
- Into the Woods by Jonathan Morali for Life is Strange 2.
- The Halo Theme (of course).
- The extended Valve Theme from Half-Life.
In the future I’ll make another of these lists and share more soundtracks to enjoy and songs to brainwash, and hopefully at that point I will have built a comments section for you to share your favourites.
