The Brightlands/The Winterlands

Track 1-15: The Brightlands(Day/Night)

The Brightlands feel fresh and bracing, filled with light filtered through green leaves dancing in the breeze. This is also the most developed area on the continent, home to cities like New Delsta. My goal with this theme was to express the freshness of the landscape combined with the glittering glamor of the cities.

The overall vibe is one of twinkling piano, a symbolic sound, combined with the warm timbre of the strings.

I imagine a lot of people feel that the field music for this game feels grander in scale than the music in OT1. As I mentioned in a previous post, this comes from my searching for ways to take OT1’s music to the next level. To be honest, even while composing it, I worried that some of it might actually be a bit overwhelming to listen to.

However, because every field piece has a night version as well, I decided it made more sense to save the quiet moments for the nocturnal arrangements, and the result was the current structure. After all, this also makes it easier to give the day and night versions distinct energy levels, right?

Track 1-17: The Winterlands(Day/Night)

The Winterlands are a region of brutal cold and howling blizzards where Osvald starts his journey. In the music, I wanted to express not just the chill of the snow and cruelty of the conditions, but also the sense of mission that drives Osvald and the grimness of his journey.

Like the music for the Frostlands in OT1, I did adopt “snow” as a theme, but if the Frostlands music evoked snow as viewed from inside a cabin, enjoying a bowl of hot stew by a crackling fire, in the Winterlands I strived to express the symmetrically harsh flipside of that—the kind of bitter cold that saps body heat and freezes even human emotion solid.

Different ways of viewing the same musical theme, like “snow,” change the expressive techniques used, which in turn allows a range of messages to be sent. This is one of the fascinating things about music, in my opinion; by all means, please keep an ear out for it while listening.

Translation: Matt Treyvaud