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Of all the things the Ace Combat series does well, music is among its greatest strengths.
The soundtracks to each entry are generally very good, and far more eclectic and interesting than you might expect from games about fighter jets blowing up other fighter jets.
Well, it seems like the upcoming new entry, Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve, will continue the trend:
A new dev diary has just been released, this time focusing on music and sound in the flight action game.
Chief staff on the project talk about the importance of music to the experience, and how the soundtrack for AC8 has been made in accordance with the story and the action.
"For this project, every composer created their music after first becoming familiar with Ace Combat 8's story, world, mission design, and other key elements," says music director Mitsuhiro Kitadani.
"We also carefully assigned composers from both our current staff and our alumni network, selecting each person based on their individual strengths and specialties. Because of this production process, we often received exceptionally high-quality pieces even at the very first demo stage."
Kitadani adds that AC8 adopts a "more modern" approach to its music while respecting "the established tone and style" of the series.
In terms of sound design, the game's sound director Ryo Watanabe talks about supporting "the main character experience" through sound.
To that end, the team has developed what it calls focus mixing, which means the audio balance of music, sound effects, and dialogue "changes in real time depending on the player's situation." The idea is that the system "enhances the impact" of whatever it is you're doing.
Having played the game a few months ago, one of the highlights for me was the sound design; effects like explosions and planes zooming by were extremely punchy.
The dev diary gets a bit nerdy regarding the sound of plane flybys before moving onto discussing the game's main theme and a dynamic music system that means whatever track is playing is affected by your actions.
I'm super confident Ace Combat 8 is going to look and sound excellent when it comes in for landing on 2nd October.