Music and From Software

Chu Ishikawa is an awesome Japanese industrial composer who is probably most famous for creating the music of Tetsuo: The Iron Man in 1989. By doing sound design work for several movies, he (and later his percussion group Der Eisenrost) ended up also having a major influence on video game music in Japan throughout the 90s. What's less obvious, however, is whether or not he was directly involved in working on music for From Software's King's Field series. Now, Chu Ishikawa worked on the soundtracks for every Takashi Miike film in the 90s. Except for ONE, Full Metal Yakuza (1997). This film's soundtrack is credited to a contract group called Sound Kids Corp. (sometimes credited as simply SoundKids). However, Full Metal Yakuza's soundtrack sounds pretty much the same as any other Chu Ishikawa soundtrack for a Miike movie.

Bloodborne Fan Reaction

So Bloodborne has been out for about a week and a half, and as a long time devotee of From Software’s games I couldn’t be happier. The game is an incredible thematic and mechanical evolution of the story and level design found in its predecessors while also offering a more detailed world to play through. While I’m happy to see such a good game receive high critical praise, at the same time I’m noticing a trend where most reviewers are talking less about how the game is good, and more about how the game is hard. Not much is said about what it does that sets it apart mechanically from other adventure games other than your character gets killed often. Getting killed repeatedly is presented as a mark of validity, only a real gamer would make it through Bloodborne, a real video game where you get killed over and over again!

The weird thing about this is that Bloodborne is actually much more accessible than its predecessors by design, yet the changes and reasoning behind why are lost on the many people that use Bloodborne less as a fun game and more as a platform to judge others’ gaming skills. It’s taboo to simply not enjoy Bloodborne for what it is, and I constantly see this bristling reaction to people who don’t like it, since how could anyone not like Bloodborne? Toxic folks live under the assumption that since they like certain games, and they play games, they are true gamers. People who don’t like the exact same games as them are somehow lesser people. It’s especially tragic coming from From Software fans, however, since we were all collectively crushed by their games over the years.

Something fans seem to be forget about Demon’s Souls is that it actually has an excellent tutorial. It eases players into its more deliberate pacing, with an introductory area that gets subtly more complex as it goes on. More than just a few brief messages on the game’s controls, it quickly gets you used to the idea of taking things slowly, peaking around corners, and paying attention to what’s above and below you (compared to how many big budget titles eschew use of vertical space in their level design, this may be the most important part).