Dynamic Music at the Macro and Micro Levels: A Comparison of The Pathless (2020) and Tchia (2023)¹

The unpredictability of player behavior in open-world games presents notable challenges, particularly for developers with storytelling ambitions. Most composers have met these challenges by writing music for each distinct location in the game. The issue with a location-focused approach is that most open-world games have stories and characters who develop and change. These changes are communicated through characters’ choices or new abilities they acquire. Aesthetics, especially musical aesthetics, is a neglected storytelling tool. Most discussions of dynamic music have focused on the micro level: how the music may respond to the moment-to-moment actions a player takes within a single play session. There has been less concern with the macro level: how the music may respond to the player’s progress in the game, usually over several play sessions. Through a comparison of The Pathless (Giant Squid, 2020, music by Austin Wintory) and Tchia (Awaceb, 2023, music by John Robert Matz), I argue that different approaches to music composition and implementation may be needed depending on which level is the focus. Although both Wintory and Matz were attentive to musical development on the macro level, I argue that Tchia is more successful at this timescale whereas The Pathless performs better on the micro level. My experiences playing these games suggest that feeling that the score is responding to one’s macro-level progress depends on players noticing that the music has changed and linking that change to something they have done or something that has happened in the story. I argue that Matz’s tuneful themes that respond to a select few in-game parameters serve the macro level better than current tendencies toward ambient music and more and more complex implementation schemes.