FFXVI composer Masayoshi Soken’s exclusive look at the soundtrack

blog.playstation.com:

Hello everyone! This is Masayoshi Soken, the main composer of Final Fantasy XVI. People often have a conception that composers only think about music, but I’m actually a gamer through and through. While I do talk about music a lot, to be honest, I enjoy talking about video games more than music. I’m an old guy that’s a gamer from head to toe.

Now, we composed the music for this title with the idea of going straight to the core of the dark fantasy genre. I believe a lot of people would agree with me, but I feel that the music is an essential element of the “Final Fantasy” game experience.

We composed a lot of in-game music that will stir the hearts of the players and enrich their game playing experience to the fullest this time around as well. FFXVI is packed with these kinds of tracks, so it would make me very happy if fellow gamers can give the game a try. If you’re planning to play FFXVI, please enjoy and turn the volume up a bit louder than usual!

This is the very first track that plays when you launch FFXVI.

When you’re launching a “Final Fantasy” game, you’d want the Prelude to play before anything, right? But tracks with major key progressions, as with the traditional Preludes, didn’t fit at all with the world of FFXVI…Because of that, we transposed this track into a minor key and arranged it so that it more closely represents the world of FFXVI.

This track also plays early in the game. In order to have players audibly recognize early on that they’re playing a Final Fantasy game, we arranged the melody from the Prelude for this track.

The arrangement for this track changes interactively in the game depending on the situation, but due to the constraints of an original soundtrack, the track included in it has