Sonic Forces - OST Thread

[NikoS]

yeah there are these two, but there is also "Sonic Forces Hi-Res Collection", according to sonic channel

Tracklist:

Spoiler

1. This Is Our World
2. Theme of the Resistance - Title Screen ver.
3. Cutscene - You May Call Me "Infinite"
4. This Is Who You Are
5. Theme of the Resistance
6. This Is Our World - Phase 1
7. This Is Our World - Phase 2
8. Mission Failed
9. Taking It Back
10. Cutscene - Valor and Wonder
11. Cutscene - Parting Ways
12. The Light of Hope [feat. Amy Hannam]
13. Cutscene - New Journeys
14. Fist Bump - Piano ver.
15. Fist Bump

This apparently contains all the orchestral songs in the game, but it also have Fist Bump as the last track, does this mean we will be getting a full orchestral version of Fist Bump? 'cause i'm all for it

[Gabz Girl]

After beating the game I can now give my proper thoughts on the Sonic Forces soundtrack. Like Sonic Lost World before it, it’s a very mixed bag; some of it is great, there’s a couple that are just okay and then there’s forgettable and just plain bad. The tunes that stick out to me the most as favourites are the orchestral pieces of music, which sound epic af, Light of Hope which is a really nice animu ED song and Avatar.

oh, Avatar. Your gameplay style may be janky as shit but your songs are SO DAMN GOOD. They’re so catchy and sound great, with Aqua Road and Spaceport being my favourites despite the somewhat melodramatic lyrics lol. Guess it helps that I like dance/techno/electro music too, so go Avatar! <3

As for the rest, Sonic’s songs are fine but it has way too much synth for my liking, so I can’t fully enjoy it sadly. >< The boss battle music is alright (dat final boss though! WAY better than Lost World’s forgettable tune!) and Fist Bump has...actually grown on me! Used to hate the song but now I can’t stop singing it! XD Infinite’s on the other hand...well, let’s wait till we get the full version of that song.

Now for the bad. Of course, it’s Classic Sonic. What did they do to you? Not only do you play like crap, but they managed to screw up your music too! Now that’s not saying it’s ALL bad, I kinda like Ghost Town and Casino Forest. They’re catchy little tunes that I find quite memorable. The trouble with those tracks and the rest of Classic Sonic’s music though is that Megadrive Sound they were going for really, REALLY doesn’t work here. It clashes too much with the dark, edgy atmosphere of Sonic Forces and begs the question why they didn’t just go with the Generations style music they had before! Speed Highway Classic is an awesome song, more of THAT please and less of the bleepy bloopy mess that is Green Hill!

tl;dr A mixed Sonic soundtrack. There’s some stuff that’s great, then the rest which is fine/okay and Classic Sonic which is bad. 

[JezMM]

Disappointing that the Classic* and Modern Sonic stages are just called what the name of the stage is after Runners' creative OST names, but glad that the Avatar stage music at least has actual song names considering they have lyrics.  The lack of proper song names for the other stages also seems odd when the menu themes and QTE sequence music of all things have proper names lol.

I also feel, as an album experience, Infinite's theme should've been the penultimate track on the vocal album, allowing it and Fist Bump to bookend the avatar songs, and also serving as a more intense high point before the ending theme than Imperial Tower's theme is.

Buuuut I always have weird little pet peeves like this with Sonic OSTs, I'll make my own ordered playlist to my preferences after it comes out, lol.

 

*(Excluding the returning stages, which is a nice thought to not cause confusion with the original songs... even though there's been two of those for Death Egg anyway lol).

[Ultimate Victory 64]

I kinda grown a soft spot for the Classic. They're not great but they have that charm (except Green Hill)

I do love the Egg Dragoon boss themes.

Act 2 reminded of a certain level and for the life I couldn't figure out until now

At 0:23 They took a piece of Flying Battery Zone and remixed it

At 0:25

[Forte-Metallix]

In case y'all missed it, we finally have Infinite's full theme:

Honestly, there's not much we haven't already heard. But I still like it, over-the-top as it may be.

[Guest]

Hm yeah there doesn’t seem to be much more than we already had but it still sounds great! Hands down my favourite character/vocal theme in Sonic since... like... actually ever?

[JezMM]

For those in the UK who want to dip in and support western soundtrack releases with your hard-earned cash, the Amazon release is slightly cheaper than iTunes (and is in MP3 format rather than M4A, natch):

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B077QHHJYH/ref=oh_aui_d_detailpage_o00_?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[Bobnik]

Listened to the full theme. Somewhat disappointed there's no full second verse, but it's still one of the greatest tracks in a while for me. I missed this type of music lol.

[NikoS]

So, i'm thinking about buying the OST from Amazon, since it's cheaper than on Itunes, but will i be able to download the mp3 files to my hard drive / import to Itunes and my phone? I never bought digital media from amazon before and i want to be sure before buying, i searched about this online but the explanation was kinda... vague

 

[Kellan]

@NikoS I checked on the US site, and it says that mp3 downloads are DRM free. That should mean that you’d be able to import it to iTunes no problem.

[JezMM]

Amazon will try to get you to download their own music app or stream it, but there should be the option to just download the mp3 files in a zip underneath these suggestions.

If for some reason you can't find the option or the initial download goes wrong, you can try again easily by clicking "My Account" in the top right, then "My Orders".  The purchase will be listed there along with an easy-to-see "Download music" link on the right.

Amazon's downloads are standard mp3 files with no DRM and should work on any device.

If for some reason you do have any issues just contact Amazon's help desk, they have IM chat and honestly I've never had a bad experience with Amazon's customer service, they'll bend over backwards to make things right, in the past they've processed refunds on purchases I wasn't happy with no-questions-asked.

[Swing]

The vocal tracks sound actually fine, but they do not fit the theme of this game very well. If this game ever had a theme from begin with. 

[TheOcelot]

Still waiting for my copy which I ordered from cdjapan

 

[NikoS]

Thanks @Santa Kellan and @JezMM , IT WORKED!!!

 

[The Tenth Doctor]

My copies came in today and I like the presentation of the CD's. Points removed for the info being a fold out rather than a booklet but still love those covers. Also, Ohtani dominated this more than I thought Why they keep hiring big orchestra's and then fake orchestraing the final boss just confuses me.

[pppp]

I wouldn't even mind buying the soundtrack if it wasn't for issues like these:

Notice how because of the fade out you can't hear the last few seconds of the song.

Through the gamerip you can listen to it properly:

 

[Meta77]

All songs have faders cause.they lead into other songs instead of hard stops into the next. You hear a.fuller one on a rip cause.that files meant for a loop in a stage

[FlameStream]

For some reason, I actually thought it wouldn't be released outside Japan digitally so I went through loops getting it. Ah well, haha.

That said, even with the few odd tracks here and there, I'm quite enjoying the soundtrack. Definitively a nice purchase.

[JezMM]

2 hours ago, Meta77 said:

All songs have faders cause.they lead into other songs instead of hard stops into the next. You hear a.fuller one on a rip cause.that files meant for a loop in a stage

No, pppp is right, this is a weird case.

In the game files, looping songs end very suddenly, usually in the middle of a part of the song after the point where the song starts over.  They don't have proper endings.

Meanwhile, on the soundtrack, most songs DO have proper endings, or fade out shortly after the loop.  It's really weird that this one song fades out on the soundtrack despite having a proper ending in the game files (you never hear it in-game because that double boost track is only ever heard in Arsenal Pyramid and Final Judgement - in both cases the sequence is shorter than the song).

This isn't a case of the song fading out after a loop point, it's a case of the song fading out before it's even played one loop (not that it does loop in-game anyway).

[pppp]

Finally listened to the cutscene music and I gotta say, for as much as SEGA hyped the fact that they got the London Symphony Orchestra, they're wasted on really bland music. This is the orchestra that scored Star Wars, The Last Guardian, Superman, Indiana Jones and other great works of art and yet they are stuck with subpar material here. The Main Orchestral Theme is good, but still nowhere near as good as the brilliant orchestral stuff in Unleashed and Colors.

I personally find 06 to have the best cutscene music in the series, and the interesting thing is that Takahito Eguchi, one of the cutscene composers of that game also did most of the cutscene music in Forces. Let's compare his music for the ending cutscene of both games:

 

Don't get me wrong, New Journeys is fine enough, but I honestly find Past Memories to have alot more heart to it despite being attached to a much worst ending.

I think even the composers are getting burned out of Sonic.

[Sephy]

8 hours ago, pppp said:

I think even the composers are getting burned out of Sonic.

This is something I was thinking some time now...Already in Lost World, I thought that the quality of the songs had dropped considerably and I didn't quite understand why because Ohtani has done some fantastic job bejore, so I started to do some research...

If we take a look in past videogames where Ohtani worked as Sound director we can find some interesting things about composers:

Sonic 2006: Tomoya Ohtani, Mariko Nanba, Hideaki Kobayashi, tai-hey, Takahito Eguchi, Seirou Okamoto, Jun Senoue.

Sonic Unleashed: Tomoya Ohtani, Kenichi Tokoi, Fumie Kumatani, Hideaki Kobayashi, Takahito Eguchi, Mariko Nanba

Sonic Colours: Tomoya Ohtani, Fumie Kumatani, Kenichi Tokoi, Naofumi Hataya, Hideaki Kobayashi, Mariko Nanba, Yukifumi Makino

 

But since Sonic Lost World, the number of composers started to decrease:

Sonic Lost World:  Tomoya Ohtani, Takahito Eguchi, Naofumi Hataya, Jun Senoue

The only reason why Senoue is credited here is because they had reused a song from Sonic Adventure 2.

And now for Sonic Forces (from what I can recall from Ohtani words, because I didn't see the tracks credits): Tomoya Ohtani, Naofumi Hataya, Kenichi Tokoi.

 

So the reason why the quality of the soundtrack of recent games has dropped is that there are not as many composers working in the new games as in past games and almost all the main composition work is falling on Ohtani's shoulders (This makes the quality of his work suffer). Maybe there's no enough budget for soundtrack as before?

[pppp]

1 hour ago, Sephy said:

Sonic Forces (from what I can recall from Ohtani words, because I didn't see the tracks credits): Tomoya Ohtani, Naofumi Hataya, Kenichi Tokoi.

 

So the reason why the quality of the soundtrack of recent games has dropped is that there are not as many composers working in the new games as in past games and almost all the main composition work is falling on Ohtani's shoulders (This makes the quality of his work suffer). Maybe there's no enough budget for soundtrack as before?

Like I said, there's also Takahito Eguchi(And Yutaka Minobe), but yeah aside from that you got it right.

I really want Ohtani to take a break and let's have Jun be the Sound Director, let him give us another Black Knight OST, that one didn't have Tokoi, Ohtani or Kumatani and was still phenomenal, heck, Howard Drossin returned after 15 years of absence and Richard Jacques finally got the chance to work on a Sonic Team game. We even got some contributions from freaking Tommy Tallarico. Let Jun use his connections in the music industry to give us something like that again.

[The Tenth Doctor]

22 hours ago, Sephy said:

 

The only reason why Senoue is credited here is because they had reused a song from Sonic Adventure 2.

And now for Sonic Forces (from what I can recall from Ohtani words, because I didn't see the tracks credits): Tomoya Ohtani, Naofumi Hataya, Kenichi Tokoi

Jun has one track he SHOULD have been credited for. "Cutscene-The Fake" is All Hail Shadow so Jun's work but the book only says "taken from Sonic the Hedgehog". Hell, they don't even credit Tee Lopes for the snippet of the Mania theme used in "Cutscene - Good to see a Sonic".

[JezMM]

4 hours ago, The Tenth Doctor said:

Jun has one track he SHOULD have been credited for. "Cutscene-The Fake" is All Hail Shadow so Jun's work but the book only says "taken from Sonic the Hedgehog". Hell, they don't even credit Tee Lopes for the snippet of the Mania theme used in "Cutscene - Good to see a Sonic".

To be fair, Tee Lopes' compositions for Mania are owned by SEGA and they can do with them as they wish.

...Unless Fumie Kumatani got credited in the booklet as the original composer of Rhythm and Balance or Supporting Me, skipping over Tee Lopes would be weird in that case.

[Meta77]

 

Highest quality i could do from the actual physical disc. The amazon mp3s were just a bit undersounding to me. Honestly outside sonic 06 this is my next favorite ost followed by unleased.