Thoughts and players
Another expansion, another original soundtrack for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, so it was only a matter of time till you got another High Notes piece from me. This time around it’s all about The Siege Of Paris, the second expansion of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, the final for 2021 and possibly whatever is covered by the original season pass. We can expect at least one more expansion in 2022 and —I bet— another soundtrack album to go with that.
As has been the norm for years, Assassin’s Creed expansions get their own soundtrack release and, sometimes, maybe even their own signature music style within the greater framework the base game has formed. Traditionally, Ubisoft mixes and matches composers in such cases. Sometimes we get the composer that just so happens to also be working on the next major release. Sometimes we get someone that just shows up for this particular job or an encore of the main composer. Other times it’s some kind of mix. If I had to slot Wrath Of The Druids somewhere, I’d go with the latter case.
Alan Wake is not one of my favourite games. But it is one I always remember of fondly. It is no surprise then that I tend to have the exact same relationship with the game’s soundtrack. In a way I remember some of the game’s music even more fondly than the game itself. Does this mean this is one of my favourite soundtracks? No. Not really.
And yet, there are at least a couple of tracks that I find myself humming at random moments, even when it does not register to me where they are from. This is far from normal in my case, as I can be quite particular with the soundtracks I care about. And despite any shortcomings, Alan Wake’s music I do care for.
After roughly a year of Xbox exclusivity, The Medium, the game I believe that’s the best example —so far— of a game specifically designed to the newer gaming hardware (namely PS5 and Xbox Series consoles), is coming on Sony’s youngest system. I’ve wanted to put down some thoughts on the game’s music since I first played it on Xbox and, as you can tell, it took me so long that it made more sense to time this with the launch of another version.
The composer duo that made Bloober Team’s latest game whole with their music consists of Akira Yamaoka and Arkadiusz Reikowski. It is an interesting combination for various reasons.
As far as soundtrack releases go, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s didn’t exactly go by the book. Usually the main album shows up at the game’s launch while extra recording, in-game songs etc. form one or more additional albums that are released later on. And while an extra album or two might still be in the pipeline for the franchise’s latest, the first outing was a bit more unconventional.
Before the game even launched we saw the release of two EP albums: “Out Of The North” and “The Ravens Saga”. Later on more EPs were added: “Sons Of The Great North”, “The Wave Of Giants” and “Twilight Of The Gods”. All EPs contain some tracks that are also part of the main album that was released at game launch but also include a few that aren’t part of said main album. Which means that whoever wants to get the soundtrack for keeps, will have to buy a bunch different albums from the off1. What I can say is that, overall, the standard album works perfectly well as a proper anthology of the whole work, leaving off just a few tracks as essential as the ones already included. In most cases you’ll be missing out on more —sometimes very good— ambience-oriented compositions (with the exception of “The Wave Of Giants” that’s essentially an Einar Selvik EP). With all that out of the way, I’ll be commenting on the soundtrack taking into account all releases.
Back when I was chief editor at Enternity.gr I started a series of articles called High Notes, each focusing either on a specific game soundtrack or even a whole franchise’s. In each case I share some background information, some thoughts and notes over the works I focus on and make sure to provide custom Apple Music and Spotify playlists with the tracks that I believe are more interesting, better structured, not too formulaic for their worn good and, most importantly, with the best chance to stand the test of time. On that last point I can be very particular, I believe.
With Enternity being a Greek gaming website though, High Notes was always written in Greek. This obviously changes for this blog. Naturally the goal is to also write a bit more consistently about game soundtracks, as it’s a space I routinely explore either way, but until recentely I simply didn’t have much time to dedicated to this kind of series/column (I keep thinking it as a column which —I think— shows how fond I still am of the magazine era and whatnot).
Keep an eye out for new High Notes entries then and I’ll make sure you have playlists to follow and unique takes on game music, hopefully unique enough to cast some works under a different, more interesting light.