Nobody who listened to the previous work of Darren Korb for SuperGiantGames should be surprised that the Soundtrack of Pyre is some unique stuff. Quality in general is astonishing and something the studio can be very proud of. As advertised on the store page, this collection contains three (Bastion had one, Transistor two) albums: The main OST as you can listen to ingame, which already got double-CD-lenght. Then the BlackMandolin, which features some tracks that don´t appear in every playthrough, but are depending on your decisions. And last the WhiteMandolin, which features acoustic versions that are calm and very suiting to listen to while working. If it weren´t a game soundtrack, that Mandoline alone would probably priced 10$. All three albums are using square cover images, Mandolins with a 1440, regular OST with a 1400 pixel width. Not some upscaled scam, but the real deal. In other words, they are more then sufficient for any of today's usages for printing, media players, VR-CoverArtworkCollections and so on. Okay, so price is incredibly generous. But this has incredible price–performance ratio. So what about the performance? 1st: The Main OST is using the tools of a modern pop production, yet it can still be loved by folks who absolutely hate modern pop. That is quite an achievement... (was the case with the previous OSTs as well) 2nd: There is one real standout, which gets one of the most precious awards in gaming OST history: The guitar tracks Downriver (Main OST) and Downside Ballade (White Mandoline) are featuring the spirit of the legendary Tristam Theme from Diablo and managed to clearly surpass it. Yes! 3rd: The soundtrack paints a real vast picture, the picture of a huge world. Yet at the same time it feels like one journey, one work. It is a collection of very different stuff, but the interconnections are deep. DEEP, not clear, thus brilliant. Is there anything missing? The voicework isn´t as rememberable as in Transistor. No FLAC. That´s all.
Things put in the mixer to create Hellblade: AlanWake (Light and Darkness, several world-building effects, ...), PrinceOfPersia2008 (Fights against few enemies in sort of arenas), several walking-simulators with puzzels. (MIND would be the one suiting best, even the type of puzzles are comparable) Ah, put in some very good swordplay as well, swordplay, that doesn´t really fit any comparision. It works off great, you´ve got enough time to develop skill in it and so on. Well, what else is in there? We´ve got a lot of viking mythology background, which is presented absolutely great by audio. Top-notch sound design in general. On the side of optics... ...well, they are great in many aspects, but sometimes the environments feel "stocky", like they could have been in another game as well. ImageQuality is superb, the TAA is working great and so on. Graphics are absolutely gorgeous in terms of characters (the texturing of Sensuas skin is phenomenal), lighting and effects (they use tons of them and at least in UHD, all of them work off great. In FHD not so much.) but environments fall off. Not so great texturing and very little reactivity (vegetation, objects and obstacles don´t react to you) obstacles are thing you could criticize: The game suffers from the "why do I cannot clib up/ over there"-phenomen, can put you off the otherwise brilliant atmosphere sometimes. Brilliant atmosphere! Despite the criticism of environments earlier on, it has to be said that they aren´t only a letdown, but also a standout! The world often shows you things you´ll reach later on in far distance, it plays with light, with dreams, with shapes and so on. Really catches the theme. Several areas are just looking great and build up phenomenal fight arenas; fight arenas that aren´t marked but integrated, this creates a natural feel. A natural way of dealing with the topic in general, that´s Hellblade for certain. Having finished this game less then a day after release should work as a closing...
