The Best Piece of Video Game Music Ever Written
originally posted on Cohost, 09-28-2023
Stuttering and sputtering clicks and whirs lifelessly introduce a single, solitary space ship at the perfect center of an empty black universe. A piano note cracks through the void. Thick, soup-warm synth chords gush out from the wound. The piano plays sequences of descending two-note phrases; the only occasions of upward-trending figures exist only to prepare itself to fall further. These two-note phrases portray an approach and an arrival in its most bare form.
Approach, arrive. Approach, arrive. It keeps happening.
The accompanying synth pad floods the piano in profuse harmonies which constantly positions the stair-stepping motives as twisting, agonizing, cloying tendency tones in an endless search for belonging. In the synth’s delicate, lush, graceful harmonies, the piano is an interloper who cannot seem to find its place. They pine together in a wallowing minor tonality as the ship navigates through the darkness.
Soon, it is revealed what the ship is sailing towards: a single, solitary planet. The music resolves in a winding sequence of secondary functions which eventually lands on a brightly-glowing major substitution of the key’s previously-minor dominant chord, changing the key from G minor to D major; the next step forward on the circle of fifths. The piano has finally ceased its perpetual sinking and found a comfortable place to rest, but in so doing has completely up-ended the entire foundation the music had been built on. Though isn’t it progress to move from G to D? And isn’t major supposed to be nicer than minor, anyway? Isn’t this better?
Inside the space ship are memories of past expeditions. Monitors show planets marked with a red icon of a humanoid figure split in two. The planets are no longer useful. Maybe they were never useful to begin with. The piano and synth melt from their triumphant D major tonality to incorporate colors from G minor, but never quite embrace the truth of that sound. The previous melancholic longing is replaced with uncertainty and hesitancy. It’s resisting itself.
One planet on a monitor is indicated with a green icon and a still-whole humanoid figure. Mirroring the planet’s initial reveal, the music resolves on another glistening major substitution of a primary minor triad; this time instead of D, it is the original tonic G. The tone-shifting Picardy third is raised, of course, by who else but the piano. Even in returning to G as a tonal center, the piano does not allow it to return in its original minor form. It must be major. Major is hopeful. Isn’t it hopeful?
A dormant robot is seen in a charging pod. The robot is adorable. An orchestra wails the themes introduced by the piano and synth pad as the robot’s eyes begin to glow. G minor has returned. It’s happening again. The orchestra pleads and weeps and screams while the door to the robot’s charging pod gently slides open. The robot leans drowsily forward and takes a shaky step out. The orchestra sobs. It’s out of anyone’s control. It’s happening again.
Brass and woodwinds heroically enliven the orchestra as the robot manages the space ship’s control console. A full inspection of the planet is shown, including graphics of the planet’s insides, thermal mappings, and its topography. After this, the screen is flooded with icons of the humanoid figure. All icons are green, save for two red ones which eventually change their mind and flip to green. The robot bathes in the verdant light of the monitor while the orchestra drops, leaving behind tolls of a bell and a sparse woodwind section. Their harmonies are discordant and atonal, not belonging to any particular key and constantly at odds within their own voicings. The structure of these phrases echo the two-note figures initiated by the piano at the start. Approach, arrive. Approach, arrive. Like the piano, this ensemble also manages to find G major in the jungle of its own incongruities and ends its journey there. The chord drones while the space ship, soaked in its green optimism, drills toward the planet. Flashing red lights illuminate the robot pilot. The space ship’s friction against the planet’s atmosphere bathes them both in a deep, sickly crimson. Stuttering and sputtering clicks and whirs lifelessly introduce a lone, solitary space ship to a lone, solitary planet.
It’s happening again.