Musings: Music Making in Video Games: Musicians in Video Games (Mainly Edward, FF4)

I just started reading Karen Collins new book today, Playing with Sound, which seems so interesting and right in line with many of the topics I was thinking about in my last Musing about listening to game audio. How cool!  I can tell it's going to be hard to put down despite my busy week.

And that, somehow, got me thinking back to the Music Making in Video Games series on the blog, which I haven't updated in a long time.  I'll definitely update it a few times this week. One of the most interesting playable game characters to me is the musician. Combining this idea a bit with My Gaming Audio History and the opening pages of Collins new book got me thinking about playing games as a musician.  While Manic Mansion probably had the first musician characters I could play as (and did play as) with Razor and Syd-- who, like me, had blond hair, I played FF 4 much more and always thought about Edward as the first game musician I identified with.

I disliked Edward strongly, and probably still do to some degree. Firstly, as a playable character.  His fighting is weak, as is his defense-- leaving him hiding or dead after he's been struck even once, and in the SNES version, his singing ability is severely neutered. Secondly I disliked him, as an emotional character.  He's wimpy in his decision making, wanting to stay and cry with Anna after her death contrasting with Tellah's strong desire for revenge.  I was never impressed with the Dark Elf harp scene as Edward drags himself from bed to play his harp to save the day.  Even the game description listed him as "of frail constitution."  Frankly, he was not an easy character for me to grapple with as I was playing this game around the same time I was really becoming aware of my own same sex attraction and growing up in a very conservative rural NC environment. Edward embodied a weak, unmasculine (effeminate?) energy.  Part of my rejection of him was certainly a mirror of my dislike and fear of similar traits in myself. Was this what it meant to be a musician?

Here's the initial Edward playing scene for SNES:

And here's the DS dark elf battle:

Beyond Manic Mansion and Final Fantasy 4, later I would loves Celes' opera scene in FF6.  In Final Fantasy 7, I played the pianos in Tifa's room and the Shinra Mansion for WAY too long.  Making up my own melody for the Scarecrow song in Zelda 64 almost transformed Link into a musician, though I often opted for the ultilitarian all right button tune so as not to get confused about which melody I'd settled on for it!  In The Sims, I always made my character a gay musician, practicing the piano for hours. Eternal Sonata is absolutely insane for me right now!  I'll keep thinking more about this, and I'm sure there are examples I've forgotten right now, and even more I don't know of, but game character as musician is a cool connection I've always enjoyed in my gaming experience.