I really liked the Crysis soundtrack. Good to hear.

Inb4

AWWWWWWFLARLARGLRLGLRGLRLGRGLRGL

BETHESDA IS RUINING OUR GAAAAAAAAEEEEEEM

Let's not forget Icewind Dale 2

.... *turns and walks out*

This is rubbish, because the original Fallout used completely synthesised midi type music, and this clearly deviates from the developer's original vision.

I'll only be happy with a top-down isometric, 16 bit graphics, completely turn based RPG. It must have buggy AI 'teammates' that are more likely to shoot you in the back than perform any other useful action, and it must have dozens of completely broken quests that will only be fixed via fan patches years after the fact. It needs to have plenty of ways to gimp your character because you didn't spend hours reading FAQs on effective skill/trait choices, and therefore had no idea which skills were completely useless. Oh and it needs to run on a Pentium 2.

Anything else just won't be Fallout. Bethesda is ruining our game.

Very Lame. While I too loved the Crysis soundtrack, Jeremy Soule is just plain one of the best composers in any industry, and I expected Bethesda to maintain their relationship with him for Fallout 3.

@cordsie: . . . and we have a winner.

The music is very different, and I am not quite sure it really jives with the "image" of Fallout that most previous players have. Certainly, the main theme sounds more like a generic version of Oblivion than something from a Fallout game, but we shall see.

Caveat here. The first 2 Fallouts were pieces of art, and even more so than usual as they shine despite numerous well documented flaws.

The atmosphere of those games, which stems from a combination of artwork, music, and writing, remains unlike anything that's ever been seen since. It is possible to recapture that, and Bethesda may very well pull it off.

However, most diehard rabid fallout fanboys seem to think that the only way to recapture the Fallout atmosphere is to change absolutely nothing from the original games, despite the fact that the industry and general expectations from a game have moved on 10 years.

There's going to be a new Fallout, hopefully it will manage to recreate the wonderful atmosphere from previous games. However, it has to do it in Today's market, not 1998's market. Get over it.

@kingclip: I THINK/HOPE that was sarcasm.

Aw, when I saw the headline I was hoping to see "Jeremy Soule" listed below.

@Atheist Jew: I see I'm not the only one.

Man, I just love his stuff - incredible.

@cordsie: Actually, I find that the only game since then with atmosphere on the level of Fallout is STALKER, and the latter was more immersive. I actually have higher expectations for the new STALKER than I do for Fallout 3.

@the-hypnotoad: Hi is absolutely one of the best composers on the planet. His music is absolutely phenomenal, and has more than once been a selling point for me.

Guild Wars? I found the beta's gameplay alright, but the inclusion of Soule's music convinced me to pick up the game.

Sample tracks: [fallout.bethsoft.com]

Not going to bother with Cordsie, not worth it.

Just to remind that Inon Zur also composed the Fallout Tactics soundtrack.

I just hope they keep Jeremy Soule composing music for the Elder Scrolls games.

@cordsie:

You've been to No Mutants Allowed too huh?

@everyone:

I think I should have enclosed the first post in sarcasm tags.

@cordsie: Aaaaaand nominated.

Cool, the SOCOM II composer. This should be good.

@Atheist Jew: Jeremy Sole is overrated. So much of his stuff sounds similar and is a bit shallow. Don't get me wrong, I love a lot of his work, I'm just tired of feeling like every game sounds like Guild Wars. The industry needs to find new sounds. They should pay James Horner and Hans Zimmer to write scores. Elliot Goldenthal... Harry Gregson Williams...

Harry Gregson-Williams did some composing for Call of Duty 4 and of course did composing for Metal Gear Solid 2, 3, 4 cinematics. I don't agree with your Soule comment, he is a very accomplished composer. Secret of Evermore...

@cordsie:

Haha, pure brilliance.

On topic : I think Inon Zur's music will fit quite well into the game. Listening the to the main title, it's sound quite alright.

[fallout.bethsoft.com]

good for bethesda...

it's no Harry Gregson-Williams *cough* June 12th *cough* still nice too see they have a pretty decent guy doing it though.

@cordsie:
I see what you did there.

Inon Zur seems like a good choice for composer.

@Mohican: I'm afraid I have to agree with Digital Hero! Gregson-Williams and Zimmer and the like are very talented as well, but none of their work has left a notable impression on me like "Shit, this music is great", as Soule's has.

I have played exactly none of those games. I honestly can't remember many tracks from games past the 32-bit era. Maybe it's just me, but I don't find game composers exploring themes anymore. I guess music falls to the wayside when you have voices for the characters, but I still think everyone should take a page out of Williams' book and explore themes to make tracks memorable.

That, or play sweeping symphonic stuff as the player traverses through the same room a bajillion times (Symphony of the Night).

I'm just glad to hear we will have a big-name composer, i just hate it when an epic game has wack music, the big problem is that it's coming out in fall, which will suck since I'll be in school.... I'll have no time to play :[

Syberia 1 and 2's soundtracks was his best work.

@cordsie: Oh please! The original Fallout was just a sad and pale spiritual successor to the amazing, genre defining Wasteland.

If this game is to impress me AT ALL it must have music that sounds like it's played via an 8 ohm speaker via click modulation, 8 bit graphics, a top down perspective (isometrics are for pansies) and all the dialog must come in a print book with lookup numbers to relate them to on screen events!

Otherwise this game will be dog meat. And not that high-class dog meat with the real sirloin in it, the other stuff.

Inon, isn't he the guy that writes all the posts on 4chan?

@J.A.: Oh crap Syberia had good music. My wife loves that game.

@cordsie: You realise that the original Fallout games were designed as a niche product, i.e. not for what the market was in need of at the time.

I personally find the old fans' sense of entitlement over Fallout good for the most part, even a bit touching at times. However, this attitude of belittling them to trolls is something that leaves me appalled. They don't deserve to be so blatantly mocked, especially when they present good arguments for their positions; much better than the ad hominem attacks they receive from the press and the Bethesda defenders.

@Naurgul:

He was being sarcastic.

How do people not understand this?

Of course he was being sarcastic: He imitated what a generic die hard Fallout fan would say. And I replied that it's not right to mock them like that.

Unless he was being sarcastic on the people who are being sarcastic by imitating angry diehard Fallout fans. But I'm pretty sure that was not the case.

@FranUnFine: I was pointing out how funny that comment was. It was hysterical, and the reaction here makes it even moreso, as the Fallout folks are more than just a little crazy.

@Naurgul: A touching pean pleading the case of emo Fallout fanboys. Truly people, haven't they suffered enough?

Don't forget he did SOCOM 2!!! Love that theme.

His Lineage II OST was great... oh yes PoP2 was also awesome.

Oh, God, but he did SYBERIA! And SYBERIA's music is gorgeous.

/darth vader "no!"

God, anyone can do the stupid epic sweep. I'd like to hear something that I will recognize someday, perhaps even 20 seconds after playing it.

@dunetiger : the mekuri master:

SotN for sure, though Castlevanias share a lot of themes. Most of the sounds from SotN are etched in my brain.

The most memorable game musics I can think of immediately are...
Super Mario Bros
Bomberman
Marble Madness
River City Ransom
Riiiiiiiidge Racerrrrrrrrrr
Wipeout XL
FFVII
CV:SotN
Crazy Taxi
Jet Set Radio

I may (probably) be crazy, but Carnival Night Zone got stuck in my head for years and I never even owned the game. (hmm, I forced it to make it a link and it broke the link and embedded the movie... Sorry, it's bigger than it's worth as a thumbnail.)

+ Watch video

This one from One Must Fall 2097 too, though I had the demo so this was the only stage, and the only fighter I had on PC.

+ Watch video

... my god, you're right! I love some game music and the Dreamcast is the newest system I can think of that really caught my attention with music, not counting music games. I guess NFSC for PSP had some I liked - most people who comment on EA Trax seem to hate them with a passion though (I just prune them down until they're not distractingly bad.)

I just listened to a small portion of the samples from the falloutbethsoft site. And I was confused? Is this a game a modern western game or a post apoc game?

@cordsie:
Congratulations, you win One (1) Internet.

@Naurgul:
His post was sarcastic but almost accurate. The things those die-hard FO fans complain about are absolutely ridiculous and they fully deserve any and all mocking.

Maybe you should check out the utter cesspool of a forum at No Mutants Allowed. Tread carefully though.

I rarely notice music in games really. Often I find myself playing with the sound turned off so I don't bother the people around me but can still hear what's going on... like at work... (ahem).

But I loved Chris Vrenna's work on American McGee's Alice. Wonderfully dark and creepy. I think it was better than the art direction, and worlds above the gameplay which Penny-Arcade nailed in their comic.

(i.e. "It sucks... no wait, it's great! Awe, now it sucks again..." about a 2 to 1 ratio suckage to great.)

@KeithCourage: A lot of my favorite and memorable tracks are epic. Prelude to War, Returns a King, One Day, Roll Tide, Duel of Fates, and The Ballade of Puppets: A Ghost Awaits in the World Beyond, to name a few. That's from BSG, 300, Pirates of the Carribean, Crimson Tide, Star Wars, and GITS 2: Innocence, respectively.

It's not as easy as you think it is to make a good epic track. Just like violence and action, it's done cheesily often enough, but there's a host of really great stuff out there that deserves more than a casual cold shoulder.

Anyway, glad to hear more good news about it. Most likely gonna get it when it's released.

Not having Jeremy Soule as the composer is fallacy.

I'm sure Jeremy Soule will be back for the next Elder Scrolls installment... which I'm guessing will have something to do with the Nordic homeland. Just putting that out there.

I like Zur. I actually think his music fits the postapocalyptic style of the game.
Or Batman, he could do that too.

It will be interesting to see how orchestrated music will effect the immersion of a 3D fallout Title, as ambient seemed kinda appropriate for the feel of the originals.

@orangedude: YYYeeeaaahhh I'm fairly sure it's never OK to mock someone simply because they have a differing opinion of something than you, no matter how they go about expressing it.

@Borathian: Well, how they do it condescending and offensive in nature, so he has the right to mock to a certain degree.

Jeremy Soule is spectacularly overrated. He was wonderful around the time of Citizen Kabuto, and peaked HARD at Icewind Dale, and pretty much everything since then has been rehashing his old ideas. He's a very SLICK composer, but in terms of delivering something with actual pathos, he stopped doing that a long long time ago. He's immediatly identifiable, but not by the quality of his work. Aside from the IWD theme (which is so great it STILL blows my mind), i'd like someone to name me a truly great piece of his that wasn't brass driven chords for 2 minutes or 3 minutes of "lonely" pipes.

Let's instead discuss the less cool sounding composers that do equally spectacular work. Bill Brown's Undying soundtrack was unbelievable, another composer i'd love to do Fallout 3.

I felt, at the time of IWD2, that Zur's work was a weak followup to IWD (which was worth playing for the music alone), but anyone that questions Zur's compliance with the vision and mood of that game are out of their minds. It was a spectacular soundtrack for an underrated game, and i'm stoked that someone of his caliber is doing Fallout 3.

I honestly feel that anyone that thinks Soule is the right choice for Fallout have no idea what makes the Fallout sound. The bleak tribal ambient of Fallout 1 and 2 are sounds that simply aren't part of Soule's repertoire. Zur is less slick, but he has broader range.

Giant thumbs up, those stupid sports event fingers, only they're thumbs. Awesome ones.

@Atheist Jew: If you like Soule's work then I absolutely guarantee I can find Zimmer work you'd love. When's the last time you listened to Gladiator from start to finish? Last Samurai? King Arthur? Batman Begins? Anyways my point wasn't to name anyone who was necessarily better, just a suggestion to use actual film score composers who have years of experience and will bring some new sounds to the industry.

@orangedude: I know plenty of diehard FO fans, and that is sure as heck not their problem with that game.
This next tidbit, however, is one: According to BethSoft, some (undisclosed) former developers of the Fallout series contacted them to work on FO3; but BethSoft declined. If so, then why didn't they let those guys help? Who knows more about a series than the original developers?
According to Bethesda, if this was true, and not just some PR slip, then Bethesda; the ones who bought the license, not created it; knows more about FO than the original developers did. I think that that is just a boneheaded move by them, where they could have appeased the fanbase by letting a new person help with the game, and instead shot it down.

@cordsie: Absolute win, sir.

@Paladin58:
There's die hard FO fan, and then there's the NMA FO elitists. There's a world of difference.

Don't believe me? Here's just a brief sampling of the good-natured people from No Mutants Allowed:

[www.somethingawful.com]

@Paladin58:
And about that little tidbit, those were the lead developers/producers who Beth did consult for advice. What makes you think the lead developers/producers at Beth would be willing to give up their own jobs just to let someone else to come in and do their job for them, probably at a high salary too.