11-30-2017, 11:45 PM
I find it surprisingly hard to organize my thoughts on this, so I'll just drop an anecdote.
Take a game like Ori and the Blind Forest, a game with pretty stunning production values across the board. Take away the music, and you have a very pretty game that feels emotionally dead. While the bare game mechanics keep us distracted and the graphics fill us with wonder, the music is telling us how we feel. It conveys the most powerful moments.
It totally depends on the genre and the individual game, but music can lend a much deeper richness to a game than it would have otherwise. It may even be the only thing you remember at the end.
Take a game like Ori and the Blind Forest, a game with pretty stunning production values across the board. Take away the music, and you have a very pretty game that feels emotionally dead. While the bare game mechanics keep us distracted and the graphics fill us with wonder, the music is telling us how we feel. It conveys the most powerful moments.
It totally depends on the genre and the individual game, but music can lend a much deeper richness to a game than it would have otherwise. It may even be the only thing you remember at the end.