🎶 Persona 5 and Music

Hey you,

If there was ever a modern game with an instantly iconic soundtrack, it is Persona 5.

Playing this game with the sound off is the highest degree of gamer crime. This is not a choice, this is law.

Why do I bring this up? Well because music (and sound in general) is often criminally under appreciated.

Sound is the (ironically) unsung hero of video games. It draws the user in, stimulating another sense towards the pretty screen with the flashing lights. Good sound makes a game playable. A game with incredible sound will imprint memories for years to come.

Music is one of the few "primal" art forms, and it works in mysterious ways. There are people that spend their lives trying to figure out how to motivate others, or just make them happy. Well I hate to break it to you, but have you tried a C Major chord?

I brought up Persona 5 because it has such a range of music, with over 100 tracks in its OST and so many of them I still hum to myself on a daily basis, and many of them live in my Spotify playlists.

The game does this subtle thing (called leitmotif) where it exposes you to its music, and they warps the music into many different forms to evoke different emotions. When Rivers in the Desert kicks in, you know things are intense, when Beneath the Mask plays you feel at peace, and when Sunset Bridge plays...it is time to cry.

Even in the first listen, there is something distinct about the instrumentation and the vocals that immediately strike you, and you never see it coming.