Ico and Shadow of the Colossus aren’t games that are remembered for their music, for the most part because they didn’t have a lot of it. These games from The Last Guardian’s designer Fumito Ueda put more emphasis on subtle environmental noises to create their atmospheres. The Last Guardian looks set to continue the trend, as Ueda suggests that the “typical game has too much music”.
Speaking in Edge #294, Ueda made the following statement:
I often get the comment that my games have little music and a lot of quietness, but that’s not how I feel about them. Rather, I feel like a typical game has too much music. If you look at most TV dramas or movies, there isn’t that much. So it’s not that I reference other games to figure out what to do with music – I reference other types of media. I’m originally more of an animator, so I’m a bit envious of the power of music and how much can be expressed with it. You can feel a lot more with music, and that kind of power makes me happy as a director, but also a bit jealous, in a good way.
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