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Legendary composer Bear McCreary is getting ready to kick off his ‘Themes And Variations’ tour in April. Starting in London’s Indigo At The O2 and then travelling across Europe, the God of War and Godzilla composer will perform music from the past twenty years of his career.
Speaking on an upcoming episode of the VideoGamer Podcast, we asked the iconic video game composer which game has an underrated soundtrack more fans should listen to. While the composer doesn’t “know that any game music is underrated”, one particular game does come to mind: Genshin Impact.
Bear McCreary adores the Genshin Impact soundtrack
In the upcoming podcast episode, McCreary explained that he was immediately taken aback by the soundtrack of HoYoverse’s Genshin Impact. After playing the game with their kid during the pandemic, the composer was surprised at how “gorgeous” the game’s soundtrack could be.
“I’ll tell you a game that surprised me that went way harder than it needed to was Genshin Impact,” the composer said. “Oh my God, that game, the music is so gorgeous. Look, I’m not a free to play, open-world, loot box guy, and that game is probably the best of that.
“I got it during the pandemic, right? Playing with my kid, we’re walking around, and I was taking the controller like, ‘hold on, don’t go in there!’ We’re just walking around. I gotta hear this. Like, what are they doing? The composers. I mean, it’s almost hilarious, right? Like, here’s this blank canvas. And it’s like, we’re gonna put gorgeous live orchestral music here so that so that you want to walk around.”
McCreary explained that the music brings the world together in a gorgeous way, making it easy to spend “hundreds of hours walking around” in the fantasy world. In the time since playing Genshin Impact, the God of War composer has found himself listening to the soundtrack far more than he expected.
“I catch myself listening to the soundtrack, just like vibing on it,” the composer explained. “It’s so beautiful. So you know, hats off to them.”
There are no underrated game soundtracks
As for the topic of underrated game soundtracks, the God of War composer believes there’s no such thing. While some games aren’t necessarily known for their soundtracks compared to their core gameplay, there are always fans of a game soundtrack.
“I mean, the underrated part is tough, you know,” the composer explained. “Like if you don’t know the music from Mega Man 2, if you think it’s such a cliche that people like that music, I challenge you to go listen to it because there is a reason people talk about it.
“That was what clicked for me. The game music from that era was, yeah, was so resourceful in using melody. I mean, again, I don’t know that any game music is underrated because there’s millions of people that love it, right? There’s no game I could name that doesn’t have millions of people [that love it].”
For more from our chat with Bear McCreary, read about how the E3 2016 reveal for God of War was one of the “great moments” of the composer’s life.
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