2010 Archives - The Greatest Game Music

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Soundtrack

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Soundtrack, Mikael Karlsson, 2010

Battlefield: Bad Company’s soundtrack had turned heads through the involvement of classical composer Mikael Karlsson. As a successful writer of modern (sometimes avant-garde) classical music and with an impressive body of well-received orchestral works, ballets and operas under his belt, Karlsson seemed like an unusual choice to score a first-person shooter. The link between Karlsson and the Battlefield franchise was Stefan Strandberg, sound director at game developer DICE. Friends during their study years in Stockholm, they reconnected when Karlsson moved to New York and a demo tape of his made it into the hands of Strandberg.

Ultimately though, the Battlefield: Bad Company score album felt underwhelming. Its compositions were usually too short to develop meaningfully. Additionally, the music wasn’t as adventurous and refreshing as the references that Karlsson and Strandberg quoted in interviews (Rachmaninoff, Schnittke, Bartok) would suggest.

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Cthulhu Saves the World Soundtrack

Cthulhu Saves the World Soundtrack, Gordon McNeil, 2010

With the rise of indie games, the number of 8- and 16-bit styled titles has exploded. One of the most beloved genres from that era in gaming were JRPGs. It’s no surprise then that the retro game market has been flooded with titles that try to recapture the magic of genre classics like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Star Ocean, Tales of… the list goes on and on. One of the better JRPG throwbacks was Zeboyd Games’ Cthulhu Saves The World. For the game’s soundtrack, Zeboyd Games turned to Gordon McNeil.

McNeil had provided a couple of tracks to Zeboyd Games’ earlier Breath of Death VII: The Beginning. His contribution to Chtulhu would be significantly larger, clocking in at more than 70 minutes of music. McNeil’s stylistic approach to scoring this hybrid parody/homage was unsurprising. In his words: “Since I was a tod I’ve wanted to score an RPG of the J variety, so I jumped at the chance. The whole idea behind Zeboyd’s RPGs is to make as much an honest tribute as well as parody, and so I decided to go whole hog and put together as iconic a JRPG soundtrack as I could.”

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Victoria II Soundtrack

Victoria II Soundtrack, Andreas Waldetoft, 2010

Throughout the years, Andreas Waldetoft has been consistently churning out pleasingly melodic scores for Paradox Interactive’s history-themed strategy games. Titles like Europa Universalis III and Europa Universalis Rome showed promise during their moments of unrestrained melodicism. Unfortunately, various issues held these scores back from entirely fulfilling their promise.

It is on the Victoria II soundtrack that Waldetoft finally reaches his artistic peak. His music has always been best when allowed to wallow in its lyricism and meandering prettiness. The secret ingredient are Waldetoft’s beguiling melodies, which often manage to cover over the general thinness of his material. What’s usually more problematic is Waldetoft’s action material. Less melodic in nature, it can’t fall back on mellifluous instrument lines and can sound repetitive, if still competent.

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