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Because they are variations, they are not technically part of the "Base OST" but It'd still be cool to show them off more so... maybe/hopefully but nothing concrete
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Because they are variations, they are not technically part of the "Base OST" but It'd still be cool to show them off more so... maybe/hopefully but nothing concrete
That is an understandable take
I wish you and your self discipline the best of luck
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This is the OST that will be in the game at release yes, though I am avoiding the use of "Exact" because there are also cultural variations of these "Base themes" determined on who you are playing.
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Hello all!
I’ve read all comments over the last weeks, but have not had time to reply individually so I’ll try to address some points made in a single reply, so forgive the wall of text.
We chose to keep the main soundtrack in line with previous EU games and “agnostic” to player country culture as much as possible, so the main soundtrack is kept within a certain spectrum of expression for that reason. More cinematic is more suitable for more players, since that’s where many come from previous games. We see this as the identity of the game Europa Universalis 5, the trunk of the tree if you will.
Obviously its style stems from a western/European musical tradition (hence the “agnostic” in quotation marks above), which is part of the heritage of the series musically, and also where our own expertise lay.
Incorporating many cultural styles in our main soundtrack would inevitably lead to “exoticism” of different kinds, simply for the reason that we are not as well versed and experienced, or knowledgeable, in cultures outside of our own. Better to ask the experts! We believe it always shines through how genuine and grounded a musical expression is, and that the best quality we can give our players is to let composers and performers shine where they’re at their best.
To still provide the historical authenticity our players, which several in this thread are also asking for, we chose to go a different route with the cultural soloists compared to the core soundtrack. We knew, and can stand behind, the main soundtrack only reflecting a part of the musical history of the world and our games, and wanted to expand the musical palette in colourful ways.
So, finding good collaborators, from specific cultures, and asking them to contribute their knowledge of history and culture helps us both to avoid exoticism and to present very interesting representations of musical history to our players.
We couldn’t do a complete overhaul of the entire soundtrack for each culture, since that would mean we essentially lock ourselves out from adding more cultural flavor in the future because of production costs and hours of work needed for the music and audio teams. We tried to strike a good balance of providing ample content, while still finding a repeatable and expandable format for how to record and produce cultural music. Luckily, that fits extremely well with employing cultural music experts!
However, as mentioned we still want there to be an intimate connection between the cultural soloists and the main soundtrack, so there are a multitude of different variations, and improvisations, around themes from the main soundtrack. Not to be confused with entire songs or tracks (which I’ve seen some wishful mentions of), however awesomely cool that would be. Both for production efficiency but mostly because it doesn’t make musical sense to try and reproduce a piece written for a western symphony orchestra with a single Chinese pipa for instance. It just does not translate well. Very different expressions, traditions, styles of writing, and instrumentation (obviously). So once again we found ourselves in a sort of win-win situation in terms of quality as well as efficiency. There will be shorter improvisations around musical themes from the main soundtrack, but no complete remakes of the songs in their entirety.
Regarding the direction or style of each soloist and recorded repertoire, much like the art team have done, we went for more isolated discrete cultural expression over a more “cover all with something generic” approach. Both to avoid exoticism and misrepresentation, but also to leave ample room for similar deep dives into discrete traditions in the future. The cultures we will have represented on release for the music is
In terms of total play time it’s a bit more difficult to put down an exact number, since main score tracks will sound different to the player depending on the current play session because of the dynamic arrangements. However, if we look at linear singular songs recorded, the total play time would be somewhere around 3.5 hours. Compare this with the OST for EUIV which on release was 1.3 hours and you see the difference in ambition.
Out of those 3.5 hours, about 2 hours are comprised of the main soundtrack, and 1.5 hours of linear singular tracks recorded by soloists. However on top of those 1.5 hours are a multitude of improvisations (e.g. on the main themes) and shorter stingers, so as an experience to the players, there is a lot more content.
And to further drive home the point of variation over time, remember there are many other music-related functions and pieces of content spliced in to make the musical world more varied and alive. Some mentioned are variable breaks between playing songs, handling the instruments going in to, and out of songs, varying the acoustic space within which the playing seems to emanate, and varying the direction in speaker space the music seems to come from. All in all, just saying “the soundtrack is 3.5 hours long” is at least a little bit of an understatement, if one instead looks at what the musical experience is while playing the game (which is always our main focus in terms of listening environment, even if linear soundtracks on streaming platforms is super cool). I hope that sheds some light on how we could look at the “size” of the soundtrack in the game.
We hope to share more details and examples of the music and how it works in the future! Thank you all for all the comments, it means a lot for us all to hear what you have to say, and we’ll keep reading both here and in other places.
/Mattias
I’ve read all comments over the last weeks, but have not had time to reply individually so I’ll try to address some points made in a single reply, so forgive the wall of text.
We chose to keep the main soundtrack in line with previous EU games and “agnostic” to player country culture as much as possible, so the main soundtrack is kept within a certain spectrum of expression for that reason. More cinematic is more suitable for more players, since that’s where many come from previous games. We see this as the identity of the game Europa Universalis 5, the trunk of the tree if you will.
Obviously its style stems from a western/European musical tradition (hence the “agnostic” in quotation marks above), which is part of the heritage of the series musically, and also where our own expertise lay.
Incorporating many cultural styles in our main soundtrack would inevitably lead to “exoticism” of different kinds, simply for the reason that we are not as well versed and experienced, or knowledgeable, in cultures outside of our own. Better to ask the experts! We believe it always shines through how genuine and grounded a musical expression is, and that the best quality we can give our players is to let composers and performers shine where they’re at their best.
To still provide the historical authenticity our players, which several in this thread are also asking for, we chose to go a different route with the cultural soloists compared to the core soundtrack. We knew, and can stand behind, the main soundtrack only reflecting a part of the musical history of the world and our games, and wanted to expand the musical palette in colourful ways.
So, finding good collaborators, from specific cultures, and asking them to contribute their knowledge of history and culture helps us both to avoid exoticism and to present very interesting representations of musical history to our players.
We couldn’t do a complete overhaul of the entire soundtrack for each culture, since that would mean we essentially lock ourselves out from adding more cultural flavor in the future because of production costs and hours of work needed for the music and audio teams. We tried to strike a good balance of providing ample content, while still finding a repeatable and expandable format for how to record and produce cultural music. Luckily, that fits extremely well with employing cultural music experts!
However, as mentioned we still want there to be an intimate connection between the cultural soloists and the main soundtrack, so there are a multitude of different variations, and improvisations, around themes from the main soundtrack. Not to be confused with entire songs or tracks (which I’ve seen some wishful mentions of), however awesomely cool that would be. Both for production efficiency but mostly because it doesn’t make musical sense to try and reproduce a piece written for a western symphony orchestra with a single Chinese pipa for instance. It just does not translate well. Very different expressions, traditions, styles of writing, and instrumentation (obviously). So once again we found ourselves in a sort of win-win situation in terms of quality as well as efficiency. There will be shorter improvisations around musical themes from the main soundtrack, but no complete remakes of the songs in their entirety.
Regarding the direction or style of each soloist and recorded repertoire, much like the art team have done, we went for more isolated discrete cultural expression over a more “cover all with something generic” approach. Both to avoid exoticism and misrepresentation, but also to leave ample room for similar deep dives into discrete traditions in the future. The cultures we will have represented on release for the music is
- North German (represented by organ music by Buxtehude, Regnart, Rinckart, Neander)
- Syrian (represented by a mix of syrian and arabic traditional songs from the region played on a qanun)
- Ashanti (represented by the historical traditions, focusing on the seperewa instrument and vocals)
- Deccan (which for us on the music side means carnatic ragas in a traditional style, played on Veena and Mridangam)
- Chinese (reprented by traditional pipa music including, among other pieces, the epic “Ambush from ten sides”)
- Iroquois (represented by Haudenosaunee flute played in local community tradition)
- Aztec (represented by an interpretation of the very few and ancient pictographs, glyphs, and ideograms that mention music, played on reproductions of instruments from archeological finds)
In terms of total play time it’s a bit more difficult to put down an exact number, since main score tracks will sound different to the player depending on the current play session because of the dynamic arrangements. However, if we look at linear singular songs recorded, the total play time would be somewhere around 3.5 hours. Compare this with the OST for EUIV which on release was 1.3 hours and you see the difference in ambition.
Out of those 3.5 hours, about 2 hours are comprised of the main soundtrack, and 1.5 hours of linear singular tracks recorded by soloists. However on top of those 1.5 hours are a multitude of improvisations (e.g. on the main themes) and shorter stingers, so as an experience to the players, there is a lot more content.
And to further drive home the point of variation over time, remember there are many other music-related functions and pieces of content spliced in to make the musical world more varied and alive. Some mentioned are variable breaks between playing songs, handling the instruments going in to, and out of songs, varying the acoustic space within which the playing seems to emanate, and varying the direction in speaker space the music seems to come from. All in all, just saying “the soundtrack is 3.5 hours long” is at least a little bit of an understatement, if one instead looks at what the musical experience is while playing the game (which is always our main focus in terms of listening environment, even if linear soundtracks on streaming platforms is super cool). I hope that sheds some light on how we could look at the “size” of the soundtrack in the game.
We hope to share more details and examples of the music and how it works in the future! Thank you all for all the comments, it means a lot for us all to hear what you have to say, and we’ll keep reading both here and in other places.
/Mattias
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