Game info: website
Listening: soundtrack album
Info
I haven’t quite decided yet if I’m going to listen to Ace Combat 8’s soundtrack now with a partial composer breakdown or wait a year for Bandai Namco to fully release the soundtrack with credits (I’ll probably listen to it soon I think), but while I was peeking at some of the pieces we do have credits for I was pretty impressed by one by one of the newer composers, so I decided to check one of her solo works.
Qing Yan is a Chinese composer who after studying at a Beijing university went to Japan for a music master’s, and then after graduating she got hired by Bandai Namco. It’s pretty common for folks from China living in Japan to go by an alternate pronunciation of their name according to how the Japanese language works instead of using the original Chinese pronunciation, and in Yan’s case that’s Ao Tsubame, so most of her credits are to that name. In the past several years though it’s felt to me like there’s been a bit more openness in folks sticking with their Chinese pronunciation in game staff rolls and album credits, so she does have a couple of credits as Qing Yan too. Including in this game! It actually feels pretty fitting that she’s not credited with the Japanese pronunciation in the staff roll of this game specifically because it was developed by Bandai Namco’s teams in Singapore and Malaysia, not their main one in Japan.
Hirogami is a 3D platformer where you control a character named Hiro in a world of origami, so the game’s title is straightforward. The instrumentation here is strings-heavy orchestra mixed with piano and a good amount of traditional Japanese instruments like shamisen, koto, and shakuhachi. There’s a little bit of electronic work in there too, mostly just a synth or electronic drums in the mix of a few tracks, though there’s one track at the end that gets strongly into dark ambient territory. The area themes are generally pretty sedate and naturalistic, aside from the final area theme (“Ancient Burrows: Resonance of the Forgotten”) which is more climactic, and then the boss themes of course are more intense. So it’s about how you might expect the soundtrack for a Japanese-themed adventure game with arts-and-crafts visuals to go, while being tonally on the more serious side of things because sometimes games with that kind of aesthetic lean more cutesy/toybox-like.
I really liked the writing in this soundtrack! There’s lots of good chords and subtle rhythmic fluidity mixed with orchestration that’s not overly dense but is still nicely textural, so I found it nicely rich to listen to, and it pretty consistently hits that mark through most of the soundtrack. Occasionally it gave me slight vibes of Breath of the Wild’s town themes and New Pokémon Snap’s area themes, except significantly more Japanese of course. Impressive work, this definitely puts me in the mood to hear more of Yan’s music now.
Recommended tracks:
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“Blooming Brooks: Rippling Blossoms” has a pretty section in 7 at 1:36 (honestly this whole track is pretty)
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“Toodstool Thicket: Whims of the Mycelium” is the quirkiest area theme by far
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“Twin Terrors of the Thicket” was the most chaotic boss theme
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“Path of Paper – Shroud of the Unknown” is that dark ambient track that’s here for some reason
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