1) Arcanum; 2) The Demise of the Zephyr; 3) Wilderness; 4) Tarant; 5) Tarant Sewers; 6) Caladon; 7) Caladon Catacombs; 8) Dungeons; 9) Battle at Vendigroth; 10) Tulla; 11) Towns; 12) The Isle of Despair; 13) Mines; 14) Cities; 15) Radcliffe's Commission; 16) The Vendigroth Wastes; 17) Villages; 18) Qintarra; 19) The Wheel Clan; 20) The Void; 21) Kerghan's Castle
An atypically mournful score for an arrestingly captivating game.
Key tracks: "Arcanum", "Tarant", "Villages"
One of the recurring phrases and themes in Stephen King's The Dark Tower series is that the world has moved on: that the passage of time is inevitable and natural, but it's made out of different eras starting and ending and that transition is rarely an instant process. Sometimes you find yourself in a time and place where the old world is dying while the new one is yet to truly begin. Whenever I play through Arcanum, that phrase keeps entering my head. The setting of Arcanum is a fantasy realm the kind of which we know inside and out, with its noble knights, fearsome dragons, powerful wizards and familiar faces from dwarves to orcs to elves. But the game itself takes place at a time when those dwarves have discovered steam technology and where the realm's most fearsome knights suffered an embarrasing defeat when the opposing nation brought out muskets. The last dragon was slain not too long ago, and the formerly ever-present magic is now being replaced by synthetic electricity as the industrial age beckons forward. The world has moved on, and many of its inhabitants have found themselves misplaced in the process.
Arcanum is a game with a great sadness in its heart. The technology that has appeared is not evil, but as the old world shifts to the new the change leaves a melancholy trace behind it. Ben Houge's beautiful score underlines this sentiment perfectly. The vast majority of Houge's soundtrack has been arranged for and performed by a string quartet, with the mournful tones of its components left to dominate the game's music almost fully on their own. It's a subdued and downstated soundtrack, with its melodies playing out like laments for the areas the player character travels in; even the combat music isn't the kind that gets your energy pumping, but one which draws out the tension of the conflict. It's only in the last four songs of the tracklist where the score changes tract: The score only changes tract for the last four tracks in the tracklist: "Qintarra" and "The Wheel Clan" feature additional percussion while "The Void" and "Kerghan's Castle" are ambient-like synthesizer exercises. They break the cohesive mood to some extent, but they're different for a reason as the first two feature in the areas that act as the few lasting remnants of Arcanum's pre-technological age, while the latter are used in the more otherwordly sections of the game which literally move away from the game's normal setting. So, they're conceptually solid and the arrangements are just as sharp (for the percussion cuts anyway, given the minimalist approach of the other two), and leaving them to the end of the tracklist is probably the least disruptive way they could be included.
If
you can call a game soundtrack an underappreciated gem then this fits
the description excellently - much like the game itself, which belongs
in my personal pantheon of all-time greats even if the gaming world at
large has moved on from it. Houge's score is a gorgeous accompaniment to the generally brilliant game because it fleshes out the game's setting so strongly and leaves an impact in just how perfectly it emphasises the game's tone. I might even carefully choose to suggest it for even those who haven't played the game, if string quartets are one's jam - the arrangements are perfectly evocative on their own.
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