Video Games Should Learn from Remedy and Feature More In-World Original Music
Worldbuilding in video games is a crucial part of the player's experience. Lore blurbs, NPC conversations, and the environment itself tell the history of the world to a player. Even background music can set the tone of an area, but Remedy Entertainment uses a specific kind of track to enhance its games: in-universe music.
Despite the budgets and talented artists employed to produce background tracks, few games take full advantage of the worldbuilding potential offered by music: the chance to use songs created within the world to both set the mood and give players a tangible piece of culture. Few studios have used such tracks to better effect than Remedy in titles like Alan Wake and Control.
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Alan Wake not only features fitting vocal tracks at the end of each chapter, but has major plot points told through the songs. «The Poet and the Muse» is performed by an in-world band whom Alan meets on multiple occasions, the Old Gods of Asgard. This group is portrayed by the real-world band Poets of the Fall. Another Old Gods track, «Children of the Elder God,» serves as the fight song heard by both Alan and the player as a major battle is fought on an abandoned concert stage. Most players asked to recall the 2010 action-horror game will likely remember both these instances as highlights.
Poets of the Fall reprise their role both as Old Gods of Asgard, and appear as themselves, in Control, which shares a universe with Alan Wake. The music of Old Gods once again serves as a major plot point, with the main character Jesse Faden using a Walkman given to her by the mysterious and powerful FBC janitor Ahti and blasting «Take Control» to progress through an otherwise inaccessible area of the
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