Dark Souls 1's Music is Godlike - Literally
I think by now most people who've played them have learned to appreciate the Dark Souls games for a plethora of reasons, but while a majority of those people have been attracted to their sheer difficulty and lore more than anything, I've been geeking out about their music.When I say Dark Souls 1's music is godlike, I kind of mean it literally.
The soundtrack has a noticeably larger focus on vocals than the other games' tracks do, which certainly fits the first game's theme of taking down gods. Listen to Seath the Scaleless, Gravelord Nito, Four Kings... These are great examples of the soundtrack using its vocals as if to tell you, "You're messing with gods, and they don't play games."
Ash Lake's theme (also titled The Ancient Dragon) uses vocals slightly differently - you're in an ancient land of dragons, something important has happened here and it means something. Why might you feel that way? Most probably because the music says so. It screams "legendary," and that you're living the legend - the legend of the man who would one day discover and set foot in this mythical land. Does that make any sense? It's really hard to explain...
The first game's tracks do a great job of fitting the game's lore, and possibly do it better. Seath the Scaleless sounds absolutely psychotic, Gravelord Nito sounds like imminent death, Great Grey Wolf Sif is heartbreaking and almost makes you want to put down your weapons, Chaos Witch Quelaag makes you feel like something is clearly wrong here, Gaping Dragon also makes you think something's super wrong - you get it. And reading up on the lore of these bosses (whether it's canonical or not) more than doubles these feelings.
(Notice how I haven't referred to Gywn: Lord of Cinder nor Ornstein & Smough. I know they're great, but being honest here, they've been talked about to death)
In my opinion, the bombastic, vocal-intense style of the music is what made Dark Souls so thrilling and satisfying to play during boss fights - and the other games are missing it.
Dark Souls 3 has vocals too, but honestly they don't feel as epic or grand to me. There's not enough bass in the vocals, if any at all, to give it that feeling. Pretty much just soprano from what I can tell, but I could be wrong. I know DS 3's music is much more melancholy in tone to fit the theme of the game, so this lack of vocal variety kind of makes sense - I guess I just don't prefer it. I don't think I heard as much variation in the tracks as I heard in DS 1's OST, either.
As for Dark Souls 2, I haven't listened to the soundtrack very much if I'll be honest, but what I've heard isn't very impressive to me. It sounds bland, like what you would expect to hear in a medieval game but very average. I believe DS 2's OST was composed by someone other than Motoi Sakuraba (the composer for DS 1 & 3), so it's understandable to an extent.
I've played and beaten Dark Souls 1 & 3 once each, respectively, but have only gotten so far in Dark Souls 2 (not very far admittedly). I've given each game a good listening to though, so hopefully my opinion isn't too biased. I also admit that Dark Souls 1 has a decent amount of throwaway themes, like Ceaseless Discharge and Centipede Demon. Those are pretty meh.
What are your thoughts? Does anyone here feel similar, or vastly different?
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