Good guy Supergiant Games just released the full Pyre Original Soundtrack on YouTube for everyone's listening pleasure. As with Supergiant's previous games, Darren Korb composes and, along with Ashley Barrett, brings the indie ballad vocals. It's always iffy recommending video game music outside of video games themselves. Like, I'm not going to be playing the Pyre OST in my car with the windows down and the system up. But it's good stuff, if you're looking for chill old-world instrumentals that aren't afraid to add a rusty trip-hopped edge to the musical layering. More importantly, I found that the soundtrack, in-game, advances and retreats with an uncanny, balletic ability. Especially in a dialogue-rich game that involves plenty of reading on the player's part, the musical mood setting in Pyre plays a tangible role in character development. It's not just a dramatic shift in pitch and volume; it's like the music interweaves itself as part of the fabric making up Pyre's landscape, not to mention its cast of characters.
Without the game's context, I'm sure some of that would roll off your back. But if you want to listen to what it sounds like when a composer is every bit the world developer that the artists and writers are, then give this soundtrack a spin.
There are 39 tracks, starting with "In the Flame," which is, lyrically, a primer for Pyre's gameplay. It's nearly two hours of music, all said and done, making it Korb's longest published work to date. Pyre's OST alone doesn't blow my mind like when Bastion's OST came out; six years later, I still give that one spins. But Pyre draws a familiar tonality from Korb's previous work on both Bastion and Transistor.
Pyre just launched to nearly universal critical acclaim [GN score: 9 out of 10]. And with good reason. It's the best party-based RPG I've played in the last 12 months, and that includes Torment: Tides of Numenera and definitely includes Mass Effect: Andromeda.
Pyre is available (as of today) on PC and PS4.
