You remember the first time you stepped onto the Halo ring? That Gregorian chant didn't just play; it echoed in your chest. It was a statement. Or think about Final Fantasy VII. You can probably hum "One-Winged Angel" right now, even if you haven't touched a PlayStation controller since 1997. But try to hum the main theme of almost any AAA blockbuster released in the last three years. It’s a struggle, isn't it? Honestly, it feels like games soundtracks suck these days because they’ve stopped trying to be music and started trying to be "atmosphere."
We’ve traded the bold, melodic hooks of Koji Kondo and Nobuo Uematsu for 40-hour loops of low-frequency thrumming. It's frustrating. Gaming has never been more technically advanced, yet the soul of the medium—the music—is increasingly relegated to the background.
The Hollywood-ization of the Digital Score
The biggest culprit here is the "cinematic" obsession. For about a decade now, major studios have been desperate to prove that games are just as serious as movies. This led to a massive shift toward orchestral swells that sound exactly like Hans Zimmer’s discarded B-sides. Don't get me wrong; Zimmer is a legend. But his style of "texture over melody" works in a two-hour film where the director controls your every gaze. In a sixty-hour RPG, that same droning cello becomes sonic wallpaper. You stop hearing it after twenty minutes.
I was playing a recent open-world title—I won’t name and shame, but it rhymes with "Smash of Shmans"—and I realized I’d played for four hours without noticing a single musical shift. It was just a constant, generic "action" vibe.
This isn't just a "vibe" check. It’s a structural change. In the 8-bit and 16-bit eras, composers had to use melody because the hardware couldn't handle complex textures. If you only have three sound channels, that melody better be a banger. Now, with unlimited tracks and high-fidelity sampling, composers get lazy. They fill the space with "mood" because it’s safer. Melodies are risky. A melody can be annoying if it’s bad, so studios opt for the middle ground: something that sounds "expensive" but says absolutely nothing.
The Problem With Middleware and Dynamic Mixing
The tech is partly to blame. We use tools like Wwise and FMOD to create "adaptive" music. This sounds great on paper. The music gets more intense when you enter combat and fades when you explore. Cool, right? But in practice, this often means the music is broken down into tiny, interchangeable chunks.
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When you chop a song into 15 different layers that all have to work together in any combination, you lose the ability to write a sweeping, emotional arc. You’re left with "stems." One stem is just a drum beat. One is a synth pad. They’re designed to be ignored. They are functional, not artistic.
The Loss of "The Theme"
Where are the motifs?
Think about The Legend of Zelda. Every area has a distinct musical identity. You know when you’re in the Lost Woods because the music tells you. Nowadays, we get "biom-specific ambient noise." If you're in a forest, you get some light woodwinds. If you're in a cave, you get some reverb-heavy metallic clanging. It’s realistic, sure. But it’s boring.
Mick Gordon’s work on DOOM (2016) was a rare exception that proved the rule. He didn't just make "metal music." He created a visceral, aggressive identity that reacted to the player. But even Gordon has spoken out about how the industry's "process" can stifle creativity. The fallout between him and id Software over DOOM Eternal is a grim reminder of how corporate pipelines treat composers like assembly-line workers rather than artists.
When the suit in the corner is more worried about the music not "distracting" the player than they are about the music enhancing the player's memory of the game, we get the current state of affairs.
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Is It All Bad?
No. Of course not. But the quality is heavily skewed toward the indie scene.
- Hades (Darren Korb)
- Celeste (Lena Raine)
- Outer Wilds (Andrew Prahlow)
These games have soundtracks that people actually buy on vinyl. Why? Because these composers aren't trying to emulate a Marvel movie. They’re trying to tell a story through sound. They use leitmotifs. They use weird instruments. They take risks. In the AAA space, risks are expensive, and expensive things get cut by the marketing department.
The "Safety First" Approach to Sound Design
There's a specific term in the industry for what we're seeing: "Sonic Branding." Instead of a soundtrack, many games now have a "brand identity." It’s a set of sounds that feel "premium."
Take a look at the recent Call of Duty entries. The music is technically flawless. The recording quality is incredible. But it’s essentially white noise designed to keep your adrenaline at a steady 6/10. It never peaks. It never dips into true sorrow or triumph. It’s a flat line of "epicness."
When everything is epic, nothing is.
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We’ve also seen a weird trend where games rely on licensed pop music to do the heavy lifting. While Grand Theft Auto made this an art form, other games use it as a crutch. If you can’t write a theme that makes the player feel something, just play a 20-year-old rock song, right? It feels cheap. It feels like the developers don't trust their own world enough to give it a unique voice.
Moving Toward a Better Sonic Future
If we want to fix the fact that games soundtracks suck these days, we have to change how we value them. It starts with the "Director" level. We need more folks like Hideo Kojima or Tetsuya Nomura who view music as a core pillar of the experience, not a checkbox in post-production.
We need to stop asking for "cinematic" scores. A game is not a movie. A game is an interactive space where the player might spend 100 hours. A 100-hour movie score would be an acoustic nightmare. We need music that embraces its "game-ness"—music that loops well, music that has recognizable hooks, and music that isn't afraid to be catchy.
What You Can Do As a Player
- Buy the OSTs. If a game actually has a great soundtrack, buy it on Bandcamp or Steam. Support the composers directly.
- Adjust your settings. Most modern games have "Music" set at 70% and "SFX" at 100%. Flip that. Give the score a chance to be heard over the sound of your own footsteps.
- Call it out. In reviews and on social media, mention the music. If it’s forgettable, say so. If it’s a masterpiece like Elden Ring, shout it from the rooftops.
The industry follows the path of least resistance. As long as we accept "generic orchestral swells" as the standard, that’s all we’re going to get. We deserve music that stays with us long after the console is turned off. We deserve melodies that define our memories of these worlds.
To really see the difference, go back and play something like Chrono Trigger or the original Metal Gear Solid. Notice how the music defines the tension, the humor, and the heartbreak. Then jump back into a modern generic shooter. The silence—or rather, the meaningless noise—is deafening. Let's push for a return to melody, a return to character, and a return to soundtracks that actually mean something.
Stop settling for background noise. The mute button shouldn't be your most-used feature in the audio menu. Demand more. Support the weird stuff. Let's make game music iconic again.