Hi folks, my name is Kevin Veale. I'm a Senior Lecturer in Media Studies and fiction author.

https://wheretofind.me/@krveale

"He/Him." Tangata Tiriti. Pakeha.

I'm into a wide variety of popular culture stuff in lots of different media forms, some of which I write about academically. I reshare stuff that amuses me, post random thoughts or resources, and generally hang out.


SomeEgrets
@SomeEgrets

i thought about actually maybe doing the "what's your boss soundtrack" thing this time and queued up a bit of Small Saga while i was browsing, and like

i still can't get over how hard, especially for a one-person project, @SketchyJeremy leaned into the conceit that every major character is represented by an instrument and narrative beats are anchored by those same characters' instruments and leitmotifs with absolute consistency through the game

like to pick an instance, how we're first introduced to the Piano with Lion Waltz, then later it's reprised on Battle on the Tiny Bridge as the absolute, dominant, uncontested theme. Then we revisit the Tiny Bridge lead-in again in a foreboding minor key in Murder, and finally the entire piece again in Needlework, except this time the first thing you hear isn't the piano, and for the rest of the piece, it's fighting to be the foreground instrument against the other character. It's so good! And that's one one narrative arc!


SomeEgrets
@SomeEgrets

they are so committed to doing this that there are actually two versions of the underground sewer theme, very similar in most respects (down to the length, they are both exactly 1:36), but one of the main differences is a little background part is swapped from bagpipes to a saxophone1 because of a character swap

they could probably have just used the same one for both scenes and nobody would have thought twice about it


  1. or look, some kind of woodwind, i'm bad at identifying them by sound


SomeEgrets
@SomeEgrets

also this track goes so hard
(maybe don't click play if you want to play the game later because this is endgame...)


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in reply to @SomeEgrets's post:

that game ruled, big fan of. another thing that made the music stand out to me is just how much of it there is, makes every unique encounter feel like something important

another game that did this really well is Chicory. theres a very soft and sweet scene between two major characters where the music has each of their thematic instruments playing each other's themes before it combines into a duet and it just destroys my heart every time i hear it aaaaa