This is a first, no?  Looks like our man Hitoshi Sakimoto is doing the music for an upcoming Sega gm called Valkyria Chronicles.  It's an action RPG for the PS3 and from the videos I've seen it looks like it could be a fairly decent gm.  I like what they're doing with the visual style at least, trying to be a little different.  But what we're all here for is the music and from what's available in these preview videos it looks to be another winner from Sakimoto.  Not sure if any of the Basiscape crew are co-composing but the man himself is confirmed.

Trailers/videos: http://www.gmtrailers.com/gm/5515.html or http://www.youtube.com/results?search_q … rch=Search
Official site: http://valkyria.jp/
OST info at GMR (thanks PV!): http://www.gmronline.com/info.asp?CatNumber=SVWC-7550~1

-Mike

Those trailer snippets are quite interesting. Looking forward to the release!

Also, I have to say that the game itself looks completely awesome. A tactical game from Japan with guns and tanks instead of swords and cats dressed as frogs? Be still my heart

I'm looking forward to the game myself. From the music I've heard, it sounds pretty good, but I fear it may just be another generic album from Basiscape. We'll find out soon enough though.

Well, the Eminence Symphony Orchestra are back performing orchestrations by Basiscape's Noriyuki Kamikura (and presumably others). As usual, we won't find out about who else is involved until after the game release, but I expect there'll be the usual Basiscape crowd here (Abe and Iwata's styles would be especially fitting in the militaristic environment). I could be wrong as FFTA2, ASH, and Opoona were very Sakimoto-focused and he will almost certainly be more involved than Coded Soul, Elminage, Odin Sphere, Deltora Quest, and Grim Grimoire.

Just another reason for me to pick up the game when it's released!

The Eminence Symphony Orchestra also just announced that they are recording parts of the score for Soul Calibur IV.  Here's a brief news item and an interview with Eminence president Hiroaki Yura about the project:

http://www.music4games.net/News_Display.aspx?id=891

I was hoping this news meant that Sakimoto would be doing something for Soul Calibur IV, but that would seem to not be the case.  Also, given how large a typical Soul Calibur score is, a measly 15 minutes of music by Eminence isn't as much as I was originally hoping for when I heard the news.  I'm sure it will be good in any event, but as far as Eminence goes, I think I'm more excited about them working on Valkyria Chronicles.

It's good that the Eminence Symphony Orchestra is branching out. Game scores should provide a good source of revenue for them. Yura's interview wasn't the most personable, though.

I'd be extremely surprised if Hitoshi Sakimoto had any involvement in Soul Calibur IV. I think the correlation is probably due to Natsumi Kaneoka, orchestrator of Tales of Legendia, Romeo X Juliet, etc., who has worked lots with Eminence. I'm not sure if Kaneoka is actually doing the orchestrations (I hope so as I don't rate Nakatsuru that well as an orchestrator) but is certainly close to Namco.

Well, it was actually worse before!  "I can't talk about that." was the response to half of the questions.  Anyway, Yura-san is a good, easy-going guy, so I think he's probably just busy and having to be tight-lipped about the project as the game is a few months away still.

Given the game is released tomorrow, thought it'd be nice to talk to Hitoshi Sakimoto about this big project and his other upcoming works. Here's a link to the interview. He makes some very cool comments and I really appreciated the info on some of his other works. Also a thorough review of the soundtrack for those interested.

Interesting:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/ps3/data/942165.html

The reason why is because the soundtrack reads "GALLIAN CHRONICLES". I thought CDJapan had sent me the wrong item at first.

The score is terrific, my favorite work of his since FFXII (and unsurprisingly, none of his Basiscape cronies participate). I'm also looking forward to the game more than I was expecting, not being a fan of the genre. The demo sold me.

Wow, this soundtrack is actually very good. Sakimoto is back to his old brilliance, with hints of Vagrant Story.

I don't know, I kind get annoyed when something when something of his that isn't FFXII/FFT/VS/FFTA - aka Ivalice related - has that Tactics sound to it. For example BOFV and Gradius V are for the most part far away from that sound, but whenever it manages to creep back in during a few, certain songs it bugs the hell out of me.

I can't see how that's even relevant. You can't fault Sakimoto for sounding like Sakimoto, especially when he's composed well over a hundred and fifty tracks for these series that take place in this imaginary kingdom. I'm sure it's easy for his previous work to influence his present work. With BoFV and Gradius he started tapping back into his previous electronica work and used a different palette while still maintaining his fingerprints on the work - this is evident when you listen to something like "Staff Roll" from GV that sounds right out of one of his Ivalice albums.

I think that Sakimoto's "Ivalice" sound is when he really puts his whole heart into a project - like FFT, FFTA, FFXII and Vagrant Story - and it's evident on other albums where he shares with Basiscape members that his stuff isn't as solid or (dare I even say) timeless. So I wouldn't consider it an Ivalice sound at all - I'd consider it a Sakimoto sound, and you can tell he put a lot of time, effort and heart into his Valkyria Chronicles album.