Articles > Panzer Dragoon Music Comparison

Written By Geoffrey Duke, March 2011

You may have noticed how the music of Panzer Dragoon kind of evolved throughout the series to fit the themes present. While some themes clearly changed over time, others remained the same from beginning to end, and the music does a good job of reflecting that up to a proper standard. Here I want to take a look at what I mean by this to help better define what I meant.

Of all the music heard throughout the Panzer Dragoon series, the music from the intro of the original game is still by far my favourite. To me it stands out as the most epic track by far in how it reflects like a mirror the speed, mystery and tragedy of the events it was designed to overlap. I still even to this day, lack the words to describe it. For a start, you may notice that Panzer Dragoon's musical score is fully orchestral, so naturally nothing can adequately come close to the impact in terms of pure sound that this realism delivers. That's not to say that the futuristic sounding sounds are absent, but I think it's safe to say that the later games do a better job there considering their synthesised roots.

When the Sky Rider dies to that fatal wound and when Kyle picks up that gun after the dragon mourns his rider's loss with a soulful cry, it's like you are being carried away by breezy winds stirring themselves up into a storm as the pace gathers momentum.

"Don't let him go back to the Tower. My dragon knows the way. Please". The music here more than successfully captures the heartfelt desire of the mysterious rider's last words as it slows to gentle calmness then picks up the pace again in such a fluid non-robotic manner/way.

Now the first thing you have to keep in mind with the music that came after the first game is that it is quite a challenge to compete with a full real life orchestra. The music of Panzer Dragoon Zwei and Panzer Dragoon Saga blend into their futuristic backgrounds by almost becoming parts of the cogs in that machine in how sound effects are artificial and electronified (my word). By being a bit more in tune with reality to create a deliberate noticeable contrast, the wind pipes and later echoing tribal chanting you hear in Panzer Dragoon Orta's Imperial City (which I love by the way) reinforce that whole sense of the world of primitive humankind stumbling over themselves in the dark to find where to stand and pure soulless high tech efficiency colliding like tidal waves crashing against one another.

When curiosity begs to know more do we really need to be saved from ourselves when we are the products of a broken world that can be broken to our will instead? Certainly in Panzer Dragoon Orta any music giving definition to an organised fleet of airships built by human hands is forceful in how it shoves itself in your ears with an almost mechanical tribal sense of individual self on display that breaks away for breaking away's sake.

Now bear with me and try to follow my train of thought here because it does eventually lead to a point:

Nature and human nature almost seem alien to one another at times when we learn how to play by our own rules, suicidal consequences notwithstanding or perhaps it would be more fitting to say never withstanding. It was never as if playing by the rules led to anything better in the grand scheme of things; the world is a meat-grinder and you are the meat shoved through it who may or may not make it to the other side alive intact, if at all. You are going to be beaten into shape whether you like it or not, and here is where the Neocon in me says to hell with that much like the Imperials who conquer everything around them in order to take charge of their own destinies.

I wish the music had captured more of that rather than simply convey a uniquer sense of high tech tribalism to people, which it does, especially in City In The Storm with its rushing beats and violent windpipes. It felt like the Empire went back much more to their tribal roots.

Power is a drug that is never enough; the highs are never high enough. I actually don't think that Panzer Dragoon Orta delivered that sense of defiance to the bleakness of a forgotten past still haunting the present in the same way that the previous games did perhaps because humanity's destiny was in its own questionable hands again.

Maybe it's just me, but it seems like the story of human beings itself revolves around this theme of taking an identity from adapting to adversity, sadly, through conquest. Farewell travellers.

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