31 Days of Game Music: Secret of Evermore
There've been a few efforts to rehabilitate Secret of Evermore's image over the years, but none of them have really stuck. The product itself is inescapably broken and buggy and rather charmless.
The only moment in the game that made any sort of lasting impression is when you first set foot in the medieval fortress of Ebon Keep. You've just crawled up through the sewers, you emerge in this neglected, grimy old fortress, and the only soul around to greet you is...
You want about 6:20 on there. Sadly, there's no video of the scene readily available without LPers talking over it, which breaks the spell of the scene considerably.
Actually, forget it; I'll just describe what happens. Inside a lonely, dusty building, you meet Cecil from Final Fantasy IV, who's retired from adventuring to "settle down...and live a quiet life here." He'll ask the player if she remembers his "victory over Zeromus" - or "the time I turned into a Paladin", or his "adventures on the moon" - and if she answers his entreaties in the negative, he'll respond with only a monosyllabic "Well." that communicates disappointment but not surprise.
A bit of backstory here: by the time of Evermore's release, Final Fantasy III-come-VI had taken over as the new RPG hotness, and FFII/IV was viewed as hopelessly antiquated, relegated to history's dust bin. It seems unfathomable in these heady days of FF4 sequel/rerelease overload, but the scenario presented of Cecil shuttled off to cobwebbed nowhere, piteously asking if anyone remembered him and resigned to his own apparent irrelevance, wasn't far off base from reality.
The track playing during this encounter (entitled "Cecil's Town") was composed by Jeremy Soule, who went on to become Kind of a Big Deal, or at least a bigger deal than he already was (he scored Morrowind, among freaking countless other games). The simple, pecked-out piano here communicates loneliness, antiquated irrelevance, and just a touch of what might be construed as either self-pity or delusional hope, epitomizing the above drama well. It's an uncomplicated reason for spotlighting it, but "Cecil's Town" is perhaps the one track in this countdown that best fulfills the mission of program music: hearing it instantly transports me back to the scene it scores.
.
The only moment in the game that made any sort of lasting impression is when you first set foot in the medieval fortress of Ebon Keep. You've just crawled up through the sewers, you emerge in this neglected, grimy old fortress, and the only soul around to greet you is...
Click to viewYou want about 6:20 on there. Sadly, there's no video of the scene readily available without LPers talking over it, which breaks the spell of the scene considerably.
Actually, forget it; I'll just describe what happens. Inside a lonely, dusty building, you meet Cecil from Final Fantasy IV, who's retired from adventuring to "settle down...and live a quiet life here." He'll ask the player if she remembers his "victory over Zeromus" - or "the time I turned into a Paladin", or his "adventures on the moon" - and if she answers his entreaties in the negative, he'll respond with only a monosyllabic "Well." that communicates disappointment but not surprise.
A bit of backstory here: by the time of Evermore's release, Final Fantasy III-come-VI had taken over as the new RPG hotness, and FFII/IV was viewed as hopelessly antiquated, relegated to history's dust bin. It seems unfathomable in these heady days of FF4 sequel/rerelease overload, but the scenario presented of Cecil shuttled off to cobwebbed nowhere, piteously asking if anyone remembered him and resigned to his own apparent irrelevance, wasn't far off base from reality.
The track playing during this encounter (entitled "Cecil's Town") was composed by Jeremy Soule, who went on to become Kind of a Big Deal, or at least a bigger deal than he already was (he scored Morrowind, among freaking countless other games). The simple, pecked-out piano here communicates loneliness, antiquated irrelevance, and just a touch of what might be construed as either self-pity or delusional hope, epitomizing the above drama well. It's an uncomplicated reason for spotlighting it, but "Cecil's Town" is perhaps the one track in this countdown that best fulfills the mission of program music: hearing it instantly transports me back to the scene it scores.
.