1) Radiation Storm; 2) Industrial Junk; 3) Khans of the New California; 4) Metallic Monks; 5) Follower's Credo; 6) Vats of Goo; 7) A Trader's Life; 8) Moribund World; 9) The Vault of the Future; 10) Second Chance; 11) City of the Dead; 12) Underground Trouble; 13) City of Lost Angels; 14) Flame of the Ancient World; 15) Many Contrasts; 16) Gold Slouch; 17) My Chrysalis Highwayman; 18) Beyond the Canyon; 19) Biggest Little City in the World; 20) Dream Town; 21) California Revisited; 22) All-Clear Signal; 23) Acolytes of the New God; 24) Desert Wind
Wasteland ambient: thick in atmosphere, sparse in melody, but strong in painting scenes.
The first two Fallout games play a major role in my gaming life. The original Fallout arrived around the time when I started to get into more in-depth experiences than just simple platformers and click n point adventures, and it was the first RPG I ever played - suffice to say, it was an experience onto its own. The second one took everything I loved with the original and improved it, and in my all-time favourite games list it ranks right near the top. I've lost the count of how many times I've wandered through the post-apocalyptic wasteland wonders of both games, and the music in them is an understated but important part of that whole experience. Needless to say, Mark Morgan's score is well and truly familiar with me.
Vault Archives is a collection of Morgan's soundtracks for both games, as the music was largely shared between the two entries. It isn't the catchiest kind, and instead it represents the nuclear desert of post-apocalyptic USA fairly well: it's vast and barren of details, echoing with an air of mystery and melancholy. Most of it's ambient, with a weighty emphasis on actual ambience: they’re open-aired collages of natural backdrops that end up creating something musical by accident, with small additional elements like wind chimes, tribal percussion, industrial noise and the occasional glimpse of genuine melody and rhythm scattered within in a careful, minimalistic way. A good number of songs also extend beyond that scope, with a more rock-like twang or a more propulsive beat, but they operate on some same production elements, like mutations of the ideas expressed in the ambient cuts. It's music where building an atmosphere and setting the mood is the primary goal, a soundtrack that's primarily a, well, a soundtrack - the desolate, spacey sounds presented here were always meant to accompany the images of human life trying to form a new civilisation in the ruins of the old one, and not something that would endure well without that visual impact.
Vault Archives is a collection of Morgan's soundtracks for both games, as the music was largely shared between the two entries. It isn't the catchiest kind, and instead it represents the nuclear desert of post-apocalyptic USA fairly well: it's vast and barren of details, echoing with an air of mystery and melancholy. Most of it's ambient, with a weighty emphasis on actual ambience: they’re open-aired collages of natural backdrops that end up creating something musical by accident, with small additional elements like wind chimes, tribal percussion, industrial noise and the occasional glimpse of genuine melody and rhythm scattered within in a careful, minimalistic way. A good number of songs also extend beyond that scope, with a more rock-like twang or a more propulsive beat, but they operate on some same production elements, like mutations of the ideas expressed in the ambient cuts. It's music where building an atmosphere and setting the mood is the primary goal, a soundtrack that's primarily a, well, a soundtrack - the desolate, spacey sounds presented here were always meant to accompany the images of human life trying to form a new civilisation in the ruins of the old one, and not something that would endure well without that visual impact.
To Morgan's credit however, in making something that has such a strong link to the visuals it accompanies he's managed to create something really memorable, not just for the player in how well it helps to bring out the tone of the games' setting, but also just as something to listen to. Approaching the songs outside the visual context reveals how excellently they really are crafted and how surprisingly well they stand alone, allowing to really appreciate the subtle details within the songs. As a 76-minute package of oft-literal wasteland ambient it’s not exactly a casual listening record, but as an ambient record to get lost into it holds up well next to any non-soundtrack peers. And in terms of video game music, it’s still quite unique even now and iconic to its series.
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