Chicory made Lena Raine’s dream to write an RPG theme song come true

polygon.com:

It’s difficult to isolate Lena Raine’s compositions from the games in which they appear; the pulsing electronica of Celeste is core to my memory of pushing through its grueling platforming challenges, and the tender piano melodies in Chicory: A Colorful Tale feel inherently tied to its story of artistic struggle. Raine’s work truly fits the worlds in which it appears, a testament to her songwriting prowess.

Polygon asked her some questions about her process as part of Polygon FM, our theme week celebrating the intersection of music and games.

Polygon: Was there a game soundtrack or song that inspired you to pursue creating game music? Can you set the scene of what that felt like for you, and why the music was so effective?

Lena Raine: So much of my music really owes a lot to discovering the soundtracks of Yasunori Mitsuda and Yoko Shimomura. Both had a bit of a parallel experience where I first discovered them through an SNES game (Chrono Trigger for Mitsuda, and Super Mario RPG for Shimomura, though I would have also heard her work while obsessively playing through Adventures in the Magic Kingdom years before), and then fell in love with their music and how it affected the emotional journey of a game once it had been further developed for a PS1 RPG.

In Mitsuda’s case, it was Xenogears, and while I knew his music in Chrono Trigger was incredible, Xenogears itself fully blew me away with its ability to carry forward entire genres and unique styles and themes for its characters. I fell in deep into the Xeno series, and it thankfully never let me go. For Shimomura, it was discovering the two very different scores for Legend of Mana and Parasite Eve, both games that instantly transported me into their worlds, and in the latter’s case showed me that even extremely electronic music can have its place in story-driven games.

Can you break down one of your own songs and its influences? Was it inspired by game soundtracks, other music, or something else?

One of my favorite