Dragon Age: Inquisition's Score is Terrible
or; Why Artistic Ego Ruins Everything
Originally Published:I recently started playing through Dragon Age: Inquisition for the first time (yes, I know... I'm a bit behind on the times). I was a big fan of Dragon Age when I was in high school, getting both Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age II on their respective release days and logging countless hours in both. However, by the time Dragon Age: Inquisition came out, I was already a few years into college and spending much less time playing videos games, so I never got around to playing it.
One strong element of the first two Dragon Age games was their masterful score, composed by Inon Zur. I remember putting a great many tracks from both games on my iPod and listening to them repeatedly. To this day (though its been over a decade since I played either game) I still have strong musical associations.
Dragon Age: Origins features the soundtrack of a fantasy epic, inspired heavily by Howard Shore's work for the Lord of the Rings trilogy. You can hear the similarities between some of Zur's themes for the Darkspawn, and Shore's themes for the Orcs.
Both of these themes have a distinctive "fantasy" sound, probably owing to their association with the Lord of the Rings. Compare this to some material that is played in similar situations (fighting Darkspawn in the Deep Roads) in the "Descent" DLC for Dragon Age: Inquisition,
This track, as "cool" as it sounds, is less distinctive. It is detached from the fantasy aesthetic of the earlier soundtracks, and has a more generic "action movie" type of sound. It's fairly forgettable. Especially considering it plays on a continuous loop during a fairly lengthy and difficult combat sequence, to the point of it going from "cool" to horribly tedious (at least in my experience).
Having spent many hours playing through Inquisition, there are precisely two tracks and one musical moment that I remember fondly. This situation got me to thinking: why is it that the soundtrack is so forgettable, particularly in comparison to the previous two games? And I think I've put together a few reasons for it that I want to explore here.
Where are my Melodies?
One difference between the soundtrack found in Dragon Age: Inquisition and earlier installments is that Inquisitions' score is largely atmospheric. The vast majority of its music is fragmentary, non-melodic, and plays at random intervals in the background while you are exploring the various regions of the game. From a memorability standpoint, this automatically puts it at a disadvantage compared to the melodic soundtracks of earlier games, because melodies are the aspects of music that tend to be remembered. Atmospheric music establishes an atmosphere, and so naturally blends into the background. To get a feeling for what I mean, spend a few minutes listening to this medley of atmospheric tracks from the game. See if you can pick out any distinct melodies, particularly repeated ones (as repetition is very important when it comes to being "memorable").
Being an open-world game, it isn't surprising that Morris took this approach to Inquisition's soundtrack. The majority of the gameplay is focused on exploring open regions, and so a "movie-like", thematically driven soundtrack wouldn't make sense outside of for a few cutscenes within the main questline. But not all "region driven" background tracks necessarily lack melody. For example, compare the medley linked to above to this medley of background tracks from Dragon Age: Origins, or this one from the The Witcher 3. In both of these cases, the music does have clear melodies, despite being "background", and I think it is better for it.
Ineffective Use of Melody and Theme
Because so much of the soundtrack to Dragon Age: Inquisition is non-thematic, the few themes that do exist stand out quite a bit when they appear. In particular, there are two major melodies that stood out to me from the game's soundtrack, all of which I'd classify as thematic due to their repetition and development. The first is the theme that plays on the main menu, which is later revealed to be a diegetic song called The Dawn will Come. The second is a brief string melody associated with Orlais. The DLCs "The Descent" and "Trespasser" each also feature a memorable theme, which features prominently within their new music. All of these melodies are proper themes, being associated with some development and repetition across a number of pieces within the soundtrack. Here is a snippet of each of the these themes, for context,
These themes are all quite memorable (at least I certainly remember them, particularly the first two), but the soundtrack does not use them effectively at all. I think that melodic music helps to make major moments in the game have more "weight", but because Morris has so few melodies to choose from, he winds up simply repeatedly playing these themes (or minor variations on them) over and over again during every major scene in the game (or the respective DLC, in the case of the two DLC themes). This is made worse by the fact that they also play in the background as part of the ambient music for many areas, as battle themes, etc. As a result, the themes never really get associated with anything, beyond the trivial association of the game itself (and, I suppose, the Orlais theme only plays in Orlais--so there's that). The themes just float around in the background without doing much.
So far as I can tell, these are the only melodies that get any real repetition across the soundtrack. There are plenty of other "themes", but most of them are only themes because the track listing tells us so. They don't undergo any development and usually only play once, or a very small number of times, within the game itself. For example, the track titled "Alexius" begins with a brief statement of a variation on the Dawn theme (or at least it really sounds that way to me--I could just be hearing things), and then enters into a bunch of heavy drums, string ostinatos, and a few eerie sounding, vaguely melodic runs. Combined with some electric influences... for some reason. There's not much of a melody going on there.
I think that this explains a large part of why the soundtrack for Inquisition is so forgettable. It only has four memorable melodies, which it overuses to the point that they become meaningless. Beyond this, it relies on other, less memorable, tools to construct its soundtrack (rhythmic drums, ostinatos, ambient snippets of partial melodies).
This results in a soundtrack that "does the job", insofar as it sets the tone for what is happening on screen, and is often pleasant enough to listen to. But it is not remotely memorable. Even its more dramatic tracks (like "Alexius"), end up sounding more like something out of a generic action movie than something out of Dragon Age. Which leads into my next point...
Detachment from the Franchise
The fact that Inquisition's soundtrack has so few distinct themes speaks to another major problem: a lack of thematic continuity. What makes Inquisition's lack of themes and somewhat generic sound so incredibly disappointing is that Zur already did most of the work in establishing a "Dragon Age sound". All Morris had to do was pick up Zur's themes and distinctive sound, add in some new ones to represent the new forces at play in Inquisition, and he'd have a very effective and memorable set of tools with which to compose his score.
For example (spoilers ahead), at one point in the game you find yourself attacking a Grey Warden held fort (they've been manipulated by the big baddie of the game... honestly, plot wise it's a bit thin). This is a bit of the music that plays during this battle,
I've been generous and not played the bit where it recapitulates the Dawn theme in full (again).
In the meantime, the Grey Wardens against whom you're fighting have established motifs associated with them from Zur's work in the first two Dragon Age games. For example,
This theme is particularly useful because it provides two possible associations to the Grey Wardens that Morris could have used: the melody itself, and the distinctive instrumentation. How cool would it have been had Morris integrated either this melody, or at least just bagpipes, into the music when you're fighting the Grey Wardens, rather than just playing the Dawn Theme for the millionth time?
The Darkspawn get similar treatment. They don't have any music specific to them in Inquisition at all. The track I mentioned above that plays during some fights with Darkspawn in the "Descent" DLC is actually just a jazzed up version of the theme for "Descent" itself (there seems to be a trend here...). Another example would be the music associated with the main antagonist, such as the track "The Elder One". Considering he literally is a Darkspawn (the original Darkspawn, in fact), one might hope for some sort of thematic continuity with the distinctive Shore-esque sound we've associated with Darkspawn so far.
The bit at the start of the clip could possibly be said to fit the mold made by Zur for Darkspawn music (or at least be adjacent to it), but I suspect this is more accident than anything based on the rest of the score.
Artistic Ego -- The Destroyer of Themes
Which ultimately brings us to the root problem that plagues the soundtrack for Inquisition, and so many other soundtracks too. I think the most classic example of this is the Marvel movies--particularly the early ones. What is the theme for Iron Man? Or The Incredible Hulk? Or Thor? They don't have one. And the reason that they don't is because, from movie to movie, the composers changed. Iron Man pretty much has a different theme for each movie he's in. There's no continuity, because each new composer created their own theme, instead of building on the material that their predecessor left them. And this same thing happened in Inquisition.
Remember when I said there was only one moment that I actually remember, musically, from Dragon Age Inquisition? It was the one time that I encountered a track from an earlier DA game. During a conversation with Varric, a track from Dragon Age II plays, pretty much unaltered (I think it was the "Hawke Family Theme", but I can't quite remember). This was such a shock that it has stuck with me, particularly because Morris didn't even have the decency to let Hawke die to their own theme.
Of course, the topic of Inquisition is far different than that of the prior two games, and so even if Morris had adopted Zur's themes, he would've have had very many opportunities to use them. But he didn't even attempt to retain the "sound" of Dragon Age. If you don't already know what I mean, just listen to the main menu music for all three games in order: Origins, II, Inquisition. I think you'll quickly identify the odd-one-out.
To be fair to Morris, the decision to ditch Zur's work may not have been his. MVC/DEVELOP reported that (emphasis mine),
[...] the soundtrack had a new addition: composer Trevor Morris, an intentional direction change from previous DA games, to bring a new emotional flavour to the franchise.
I remember reading other references to a similar effect: that BioWare was intentionally distancing itself from the previous two games, and trying to create a new tone for Inquisition. Of course, I'm unable to track them down now that I want to (isn't it wonderful how that works). But even that above quote is enough for me to at least be willing to shift the blame for this away from Morris, and onto BioWare more generally. But, honestly, it doesn't particularly matter where the blame gets placed. Somebody, somewhere, decided to be different--that they could do better than what came before. And the creation as a whole suffered for that decision.
Conclusion
I'm aware that I am in a minority here. A quick search reveals that the sentiment on Dragon Age: Inquisition's theme on the internet is overwhelmingly positive. But, as a lover of the original sound of Dragon Age, I found the score to be consistently disappointing. And over the course of this little essay, I hope I've explained why. The score is atmospheric, eschewing melody and theme across the majority of its tracks; the small handful of distinctive melodies that it does have are horribly overused; and the decision was made, by somebody, to intentionally discard the distinctive sound of the previous two games for a more generic "Hollywood action" type sound. The sum of these decisions is an overall soundtrack that is, at least for me, completely forgettable. And, given the history of the franchise, that is a damn shame.