Nishiki: “I’ve composed quite a few battle tracks for Octopath Traveler, and each of them presents a different concept to each other.Įarly in development for Octopath Traveler, there was a proposal regarding battle themes, where only orchestral instruments were to be used, and modern instruments such as drums and electric guitars were to be discarded. This song was so hard to create… (cries)” It requires a high amount of skill.įinally I would like to state again that ‘Battle 1’ is the face of the game, and I always think that personally, it’s one of the types of songs I find the hardest to compose. On the other hand, for games where each battle is quite short, I believe that a memorable melody is a must, so it really depends on the type of game you’re making. This is why I thought this was appropriate. With this type of composition, the chorus comes along just as the battle starts to heat up (in this game, that would be using Boost points for flashy, strong attacks), and make the player feel even more pumped up. I decided to compose the piece like this based on the fact that the chorus would most likely be heard thanks to various tactical elements like the Break system. The composition of the piece is like this: Intro-> A-> B –> Chorus, like how a song would be composed.

While trying to realize this game’s theme for the music, which was ‘the gorgeous audio image provided by live instruments’, as well as how to represent the musical elements present in battle themes from classic RPGs, I came to the current composition.Īlthough there are some brass and electric guitar parts in it, it’s only there to liven up the music, and string instruments remain as the centerpiece of the track. Nishiki: “This ‘Battle 1’ theme is probably the track that players of Octopath Traveler will hear the most (even more than the main theme), meaning that this track is representative of the true face of this game. Focusing on the simple elements lead to the themes and motifs being easily remembered in a small amount of time.” And it was true – the old Final Fantasy character themes are all composed to be around that length. Something I discussed with the Hayasaka-san, the sound director, was the theory that memorable game themes should be around one minute or so.

Yasunori Nishiki, composer: “Every main character’s theme was made to be around one minute in length. Octopath Traveler’s original soundtrack released on the same day as the game, July 13, 2018, but composer Yasunori Nishiki has been updating the page for the soundtrack with various thoughts and development details on the music.

Octopath traveler ost rainy