Great video game music doesn't need a video game to be great
The best gaming music is enmeshed into the very design.
Sony recently announced PlayStation The Concert—World Tour 2025-2026, which will feature live performances of music from God of War, The Last of Us, Ghost of Tsushima, Horizon, and more.
Mercifully, Astro Bot isn’t listed here—unless, God forbid, it's hidden deep in the “more” section. Regardless of how short a time I play this truly excellent platformer game (and strong contender for Game of the Year, in my humble opinion), I then have to endure its bops and ditties playing on a loop in my head for hours, if not days, afterward. Astro Bot’s music is like a crazy Euro funk disco techno fusion played at 2x speed that attaches itself to your brain stem like a Centaurian slug and makes you question your sanity. It’s utterly bonkers.
To be fair to Astro Bot, I am not a big fan of most of the music in video games. I find a lot of it grates on my nerves, and more often than not—unlike movies—it intrudes on the experience rather than enhancing it.
As a result, I tend to dial the music out, especially when playing FromSoftware games. I have played hours upon hours of Sekiro, Bloodborne and Elden Ring, and I honestly can’t recall any of the music other than what plays during the loading screen. This is hardly surprising as whenever it’s an option; I tend to lower the music volume in the settings while keeping the rest of the audio at normal. I’d rather just have the ambient sounds of the game to build the world for me.
The same can be said of some Nintendo games, particularly Mario. Much as I know the music is part of the Mario extended universe’s charm, it’s pretty damn manic, and there’s only so much I can take. Most of it is repetitive and annoying, and even Mario Kart’s awesome funk slap bass puts me on edge after a while—not unlike Astro Bot. I can respect the foundational brilliance of Mario’s composers and audio team, sure, but I don’t have to personally like it.
But as much as I find the music in Mario annoying, I adore the music of Zelda. I can think of only a few other video games where the music is such an integral and defining part of the entire gameplay experience, as in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Breath of the Wild and its sequel, Tears of the Kingdom, are arguably two of the greatest video games ever made. The sheer creativity and artistry of the world-building are exceptional beyond measure. I have often argued that the game’s development team has managed to use the human brain to upscale the low-res graphics on the Switch; the use of color and tonal perspective is so accurate and evocative that the game looks utterly convincing at times, at least to my mind. The landscapes of Hyrule don't necessarily look real, but they certainly feel real.
I find myself running or riding around the world just to enjoy the vistas and climb mountains to marvel at the sunsets, especially as all of these glorious views are accompanied by some of the most gorgeous music I’ve ever heard in a video game.
And much of that music is often incredibly minimal: A few notes played on piano or flute over a soft string accompaniment to create a moment, or signify a subtle passing of time. The music in Breath of the Wild also acts as melodic signifiers for each of the various villages and locations Link visits: The soaring strings, gentle oboe and guitar for Rito Village, the more traditional-sounding arrangement for Kakariko Village, the playful plinky-plonk percussion and recorder that plays whenever Link visits any of the stables, or the spa-like music of the Great Deku Tree to name but a few. But It’s the simple piano I love the most. I find it deeply reminiscent of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s solo piano work, which is probably why I love it so.
Obviously, not all the music in Breath of the Wild is uniformly chill. The various fights and boss battles are accompanied by much more dramatic and intense music, just as you’d expect. But on the whole, the music in both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom is peaceful, emotional, relaxing, and such an integral part of the game that I often find myself occasionally playing just to revisit some familiar places, to enjoy the scenery, listen to the music, and wallow in nostalgia for the game that finally made me a “gamer.” And, of course, if I don’t want to fire up the Switch, there’s always the option to listen to the soundtrack played by a full orchestra.
If Nintendo’s Breath of the Wild is the classical genre of video game music, then Death Stranding is the alternative indie playlist.
I wrote recently about how long it took for me to fully appreciate Death Stranding. This game created by Hideo Kojima and his team was so different from anything I had played before (or since) that I just couldn’t get a handle on it. But at least one element stood out to me from the get-go: Death Stranding has an absolute banger of a soundtrack. The “headline” act is obviously the fabulous title track by Chvrches, but Death Stranding also introduced me to tracks by artists I’d never heard before, such as “Don’t Be So Serious” by Low Roar and “Asylums for the Feeling (feat. Leila Adu)” by Silent Poets.
Kojima uses music in different ways throughout the game. But one of the most notable examples is how he uses specific tracks to accompany the character Sam as he walks across the vast landscapes, creating some of the most poignant moments in the entire game in the process. For example—mild spoilers ahead—the track “Almost Nothing” by Silent Poets (featuring Okay Kaya) plays while Sam carries another character to Mountain Knot City for an important story event.
I’ve made no secret of the fact that I find much of Kojima’s writing to be trite nonsense. The dialog of the cut scenes was legitimately one of the biggest barriers to me getting into the game—though I have since seen the error of my ways and written my afore said lengthy apology. But the scene with Sam carrying the character on his back was the first in the game that actually moved me; it was the song that did it. And there are other moments throughout the game where it is the music that drives home the emotional stakes far more effectively than any of the writing. If that sounds like an insult to Hideo Kojima and his team it’s not; clearly they deserve as much credit for their music curation as they do for their game design.
When I think about a soundtrack that is integral to the experience—music so vital that even I can't deign to mute it—there's one game that stands above the rest for me, and that is Outer Wilds from Mobius Digital and publisher Annapurna Interactive. The music isn't a curated compilation but a bespoke composition deeply integrated into the very foundation of the game itself.
Outer Wilds was Polygon’s Game of the Year in 2019, and deservedly so. At the risk of sounding like hyperbole, Outer Wilds is a truly unique, clever and astonishingly creative video game that thoroughly deserved every ounce of the praise it received—and not least because of the extraordinary original soundtrack composed by LA-based musician, Andrew Prahlow.
Prahlow’s music for Outer Wilds fuses a number of eclectic genres and styles together to create immense electronic soundscapes (fitting for the limitless bigness of space) contrasting with small, intimate acoustic tracks played on guitars, banjos and string instruments. At times eerie and unnerving, at others playful and wistful, the music in Outer Wilds is often discordant, especially the electric guitar, which often reminds me of the Icelandic band Of Monsters and Men. But then Prahlow will take his detuned electric guitar riffs and wrap them within a gentle, weighted blanket of acoustic classic melodies played on cellos and violins. The effect is both haunting and comforting and sounds great live. Prahlow added new tracks to accompany the Outer Wilds DLC Echoes of the Eye, released in 2021.
The music in Outer Wilds is a little more challenging to listen to than the wistful tunes from Breath of the Wild or the alternative rock/pop style that makes up much of the Death Stranding soundtrack. It is certainly not for everyone. But I think that’s what makes Prahlow’s compositions so singularly successful as a video game soundtrack: The music is as original as the game itself, tailored as precisely to Outer Wilds as Max Richter’s music is to The Leftovers.
But perhaps more importantly, it is possible to enjoy listening to the Outer Wilds soundtrack without ever playing the Outer Wilds video game, despite the former being such an integral part of the latter. Prahlow’s music works in its own right, even when devoid of any visual or haptic references. It is a self-contained creative piece on its own, the defining characteristic of any great soundtrack, be it Howard Shore’s Lord of the Rings or Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ The Social Network. The Outer Wilds is up there with the best of them.
For those of you in the New York area, Andrew Prahlow is playing the Outer Wilds live with a chamber orchestra on October 17, 2024, at The Music Hall of Williamsburg.