The Music Of Final Fantasy 16: Part 4 – The Sound

For my money, one of the most interesting aspects of a game’s creation is the composition and orchestration of its music. With Final Fantasy, that’s doubly the case because for me, and I imagine for so many others, its soundtrack is one of its best parts. Final Fantasy’s music is on many of my favorite playlists. Whether it be through lo-fi channels or new arrangements. 

That’s why I was so excited to chat with composer Masayoshi Soken about his score for Final Fantasy XVI. You might recognize his name as he’s also the composer of Final Fantasy XIV. Still, if you don’t, there’s a chance it’s a name you come to remember following the release of FFXVI because after spending more than three hours of hands-on time with the game in Square Enix’s Tokyo, Japan, office, I’m confident we’re about to get a banger of a score. 

Final Fantasy XVI Music Composer Masayoshi Sken

In talking with Soken, I wanted to speak to him about some of the major themes and melodies of any Final Fantasy game – things like the Prelude, the main theme, the Victory Fanfare, and more – and he had plenty to say. In this four-part series, I’ll be breaking down different aspects of the music that excite me and hopefully you too. 

Catch up on Parts 1 and 2 here: 

The Music of Final Fantasy XVI Part 4 – The Sound

There is a great deal of work that goes into creating the key elements of a Final Fantasy soundtrack, such as the Prelude or Victory Fanfare. You can find out more about this here. But just as much effort goes into the orchestration of all 200-plus songs in the soundtrack. I was curious about what musicians were playing to create the sound of FFXVI, how Soken went about this curation, and how the game’s themes play into these choices. 

“I think for a lot of the themes for the Eikons, you’re going to get a lot of male chorus […] because we talked about how it brings that dark feel to it,” Soken tells me. “But I think there’s also a lot of brass instruments […]The string […] as well, because you’re trying to get that dark, classical feel.”

From the jump, FFXVI producer Naoki Yoshida tasked Soken with creating a score that felt very classical and he remained true to that guidance throughout the composition…except for one song. 

Final Fantasy XVI producer Naoki Yoshida

“He didn’t want us to go off into too many tangents and go too crazy with it,” Soken says. “There was one battle with a certain Eikon and after playing it, I thought, ‘There’s no way I can do this in classical. I wanted to try something new. I want to step away from classical and do something entirely different.’ So I composed a piece that was totally not classical. And without telling anyone, I put it in the game and let the development team play it, and the feedback that I got was that they really, really liked it even though it wasn’t classical. They felt that it really, really fit the battle.”

Soken stayed mum on the Eikon fight he was referring too, but he did mention something which I am sure will intrigue those in the FFXIV world: localization director Michael Christopher Koji Fox not only wrote the song’s lyrics, but he performed it as well. 

“That’s kind of embarrassing,” Koji says with a smile as Soken laughs along. “No one’s supposed to know that but yeah, there’s a couple that may have my vocal stylings.” 

While I couldn’t pry much deeper, Koji says Soken provided his voice to that song as a backing track to Koji and in the final game, they’re mixed together. 

You’ll also hear other familiar melodies within FFXVI, because Soken says, “There are a lot of tracks in the game that we drew inspiration from music from past Final Fantasies, including Final Fantasy XIV.” He wouldn’t share more with me, though, because if he did, he says it’d be a spoiler. 

It speaks to the general tone of the music in FFXVI. Soken and his team didn’t go out of their way to choose a single instrument or style of music to define the score. It looked instead at the geographical landscape of Valisthea, and the countries that inhabit it. 

“We don’t want to say that this place equals this place in the real world,” he says. “For certain situations, we may have instances of Arabic origin or maybe instruments of Asian origin because they happen to fit that area or they happen to fit the situation and what’s going on in the cutscenes.” 

He continues, stating that because FFXIV has such a large world, you can jump from many different types of themes and music depending on where you’re going. He says that FFXVI has a more focused story, and the team was keen to maintain the main themes throughout.

“We didn’t want to have these big jumps, so we have this main pillar […] of music, that classical pillar, and then from there, we’re going to be adjusting a little bit, we’re going to be having a little bit of fun with it in certain areas. The main sound will fit in and be recognizable. [it’s] going to go through the whole game; you’re not going to get these big jumps in styles of music.” 

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