Wild Arms: The 4th Detonator Original Score Reviews

Born on the fledgling PlayStation in 1996/1997, Wild Arms is a series that has known what it feels like to be the underdog. Even the original game – as great as it was in general – was seen by many as a filler title, or perhaps more accurately as a small distraction to pass their time until the highly touted Final Fantasy VII dropped later that fall. Still, as important as those few months were for Wild Arms, it was really the years and trends that followed that relentlessly tested and broke it as a brand.

However, as sad as the tale and the fall of the console role-playing game market have been to those with interest in it, most of Wild Arms problems were self-inflicted. While other role-playing games were experimenting with core gameplay elements like combat Wild Arms seemed a little too content with the standard, everyday bread and butter. By the time Media Vision shook things up with Wild Arms 4 it was much too late. As wide as the gap between what the series needed and what the players actually got may have been (especially to those who had played every game offered through the years) a big part of the equation was probably the amount of funding Sony was affording Media Vision to produce the games. Of course, being on the outside, I don’t know all the details, but as an observer having played almost every game, it’s pretty easy to discern certain things and see that the lack of financial backing set some of these games back.

As disappointing as that may be, one area where the games almost always succeeded was music. Like Final Fantasy before it, Wild Arms had a dedicated, series composer in the form of Michiko Naruke. Naruke quickly won hearts with her work on the original game (seriously, “To the End of the Wilderness” has been permanently engraved in my brain since 1997) and she would win even more with the following games like Wild Arms 3. Yet this take on Naruke doesn’t acknowledge the bumps on that road, as her evolution as a composer is nowhere as smooth as such a line of thought would insinuate.

So where has Naruke fumbled the Wild Arms’ football? Many devoted video game music enthusiasts point to her work on Wild Arms 2 without so much as a second thought. As passionate as I am about the second game and its music even I have to admit that problems were brewing with many of Naruke’s creations being at odds with one another. By no means was it horrible to the point of being unworthy of Wild Arms name but it definitely caught some people off-guard in the wrong way. When Wild Arms 3 rolled around most fans buried the hatchet and embraced what was seen as the most wild-western sounding score the series had seen. Unfortunately, while others loved what they were hearing I was a bit more skeptical. Sure, the music of Wild Arms 3 was an improvement (just look at main boss theme “Blood, Tears, and the Dried-up Wasteland” compared to those in previous games) but something about it always felt off to me. I’ve never been able to figure out what that “thing” is, but I have learned it’s pointless to pretend it doesn’t bother me.

With mixed messages from two scores, one would think that Naruke revisiting the tunes from the first game would be the video game music equivalent of hitting the easy button with fans minds being littered with nostalgia. Not quite. As simple as rearranging the soundtrack for a new generation of hardware sounds, the thick and bold instruments used by Naruke over complicated what were originally effective and sufficient tracks. The irony in all of this was while she smothered many old pieces with a synthesizer pillow, the new pieces ended up being the real reason to listen to the score, which helped defeat one of the main selling points of the game. Still, one can’t fault Naruke alone when Alter code:F failed across the board to recapture the magic of the PS1 original.

This brings us to Wild Arms Another code:F, or as it was eventually renamed Wild Arms the 4th Detonator. Now given that Wild Arms 4 was teaming with changes when compared to last few games in the series – a new battle system, a new setup for tools - not to mention the series’ first usage of voice acting - you might think this would spill over into the music as well. Well, yes and no. Yes, there is a dramatic change the soundtrack is known for but no, it’s not really musical. Huh? Without delving too far into why I would use such an awkward turn-of-phrase to spearhead my thoughts on the music of Wild Arms 4 - not to mention on why and how it has changed - it should be said one must examine Naruke’s work before they can even get close to the answer.

The first piece of music that really strikes me (other than the fact that “To the End of the Wilderness” makes a pointless return) is the main battle theme “Gun Blaze.” “Gun Blaze” isn’t really at the top of the list because it’s really, really good (it wouldn’t crack my top twenty battle themes if I were to make a list) but the track is solid and it represents improvement on the part of Naruke. Now you may question how this track is an improvement when Wild Arms 3’s “Gunmetal Action” was widely praised. It’s kind of complicated but at the same time it’s not. To really get down to the reason why, one must look at “Critical Hit!” from Wild Arms and “Battle Force” from Wild Arms 2. These are good, catchy battle themes that serve their respective games well. Great as that may be, they don’t really ask much of the listener. To put it another way, there was simply more room to expand these tracks beyond the artificial boundaries they contain. This wasn’t the case with “Gunmetal Action” as it stoutly lived outside of battle and thus was superior in many ways to Naruke’s previous efforts. Unfortunately, if you were unlucky enough to play the actual game, there was a decent chance by the end of it you were sick of hearing it since the random enemy encounter rate was so high. In the literal since this isn’t Naruke’s fault, but the fact that the track was very susceptible to listener burnout (much like Motoi Sakuraba’s “Cutting Edge of Notion” from Star Ocean: Till the End of Time) is quite damaging. So what does all of this have to do with “Gun Blaze?” Well, in a nutshell it contains the maturity of Naruke’s PlayStation 2 work while easily skirting the issue of burnout. Again, I’ll admit it’s not the kind of track that’s going to top too many lists but at the very least it maintains a compositional standard while avoiding past pitfalls.

Great as it is to see the main battle theme lead the charge when writing about any soundtrack, “Gun Blaze” is far from being the main attraction on the 4th Detonator Original Score. So if it isn’t battle themes what is Wild Arms 4’s specialty? As might expect, the game holds the answer. Those familiar with role-playing games (especially the Wild Arms games) may recall hearing talk that Wild Arms 4 toned down the wild-west influence the previous games where known for. For the most part this it true (kind of making it the opposite of Wild Arms 3) although the influence is still ingrained in things like the character design and sections of Naruke’s music. The thing is when it comes to the music of Wild Arms 4 it’s not really the main driving force or influence – at least not anymore. So where does the music derive its sense of being? The in-game characters adversaries. Most of the characters your party comes into conflict with are part of a military organization; it’s this - an almost musical form of militarism - that pushes this soundtrack forward. From Masato Koda’s sad and unforgiving “The Taste of Sand That Sheds No Tears,” the proud “A Future Wet With Tears,” Nobuyuki Shimizu’s tactically pleasing “Infrared Threat” and “Force, Storm and CRISIS” to Ryuta Suzuki’s booming “Ghost of the Knights” the score is teaming with military influenced pieces that are an absolute delight. But wait, who are Masato Koda, Nobuyuki Shimizu and Ryuta Suzuki? Why are they writing the music for Wild Arms and not Naruke? Alas, this is “change” I was referring to earlier. So what’s the deal?

During the production of Wild Arms 4 Naruke fell ill. To this day I have yet to see or hear a detailed explanation about it beyond the phrase “Naruke’s illness.” In a certain sense I’m sure it’s none of my or anyone else’s business based on the principal of privacy, but the way it was stated made people all the more curious. Anyway, it obviously had to be of a serious nature to cause such a dramatic shift in personnel. The thing is while I mean no disrespect towards Naruke herself - and would never wish ill will on anyone - her exit may have actually been for the best.

When one looks over the twenty four tracks Naruke completed before Koda and crew took over the reigns, one will find that the majority of these pieces are key numbers like the main/vocal themes and those that accompany the game’s full motion videos, items that would have been more important had she completed the core of the soundtrack. However, once you begin dissecting the score (as far as who wrote what) it becomes clear that the tracks she did complete become the orphans of the soundtrack. This isn’t to say her work doesn’t intermingle with the work of the others, but once you realize that battle themes like “Critical Attack – Breaking Boundaries,” “The Shinning Spear in the Darkness” and “That Is Where the Spirit Becomes Certain” (the last of which is really horrendous when played in context) it becomes apparent they are just part of a larger pattern that’s been held over from Wild Arms 3. Granted, there is only a small sample of where Naruke was headed with this music so I can only guess where it was headed, but the cynic in me really doubts what *would* have been composed wouldn't have solved my problems with the style she cultivated with the third game.

This becomes somewhat of a problem – and a blessing – because for a large part of the score Koda, Shimizu and Suzuki out “Naruke” Michiko Naruke. “For the Sake of One Flower” may sound like Naruke but that’s Koda. “over the wind,” the overused world map/crossover dungeon theme HAS to be Naruke, right? Nope, that’s Koda again. “Falling Stardust, Dancing In the Wilderness”? Shimizu. It goes on and on and on and you wouldn’t know any better until you glance at the composition credits. It’s very impressive that these composers could glue the various ends Naruke left behind together so cohesively, but those kinds of accolades are ultimately sidelined when you realize these tracks aren’t good because they emulate Naruke’s style, they’re good (and fresh) because they weren’t written by Naruke in the first place.

Unfortunately for Naruke, things only get better for the soundtrack the further Koda, Shimizu and Suzuki get from her sound. For the life of me I can’t pass up the devilish delights Koda whips up in the eerie and downtrodden “Shadow Territory,” the inherent sadness in “From Your Tears…” or the semi-seedy and jazz laden “Nightless City Guara Bobelo.” Successful as these tracks are it’s the last of the three – the quintessential town theme – that seems to give Koda trouble. In the early going it’s pretty well hidden with the Naruke-like “Port Rosalia” but once the listener reaches “Frontier Harim” this weakness becomes much more obvious. Koda’s deficiency is more-or-less born out of a bad habit of taking certain settings too literally. The funny thing about composing over-stereotypical town themes is this happens to be an odd strength Naruke forged during the production of the second game. Such strange quirks aside, the sad fact is Koda would never overcome this shortcoming before the series eventual discontinuation – Wild Arms 5 and Wild Arms XF are home of these unfortunate kinds of tracks as well.

Problems aside however, I have learned a lot with my recent revisit with the 4th Detonator original score. I’ve learned that while my auditory honeymoon with Michiko Naruke music was over soon after the opening tones of the Wild Arms 3 soundtrack, there’s little doubt that Wild Arms 4 would have failed in mending such a bridge if she had worked on it to completion herself. Such a realization only fuels my interest in what Koda and his associates bring to the table even more and they truly make this score theirs despite keeping it the bounds of what was expected. The results easily make the 4th Detonator original score not only a standout entry in the Wild Arms series, but a standout soundtrack in general. Much like the game it’s part of, there’s really more here than meets the eye.