Damn that section on Best Music of the Year was hard to listen to. An hour of loading up 30 second samples and getting the crew's first gut reaction. Terrible way to pick something, as it definitely privileges club thumpers or anything that sounds like Justice or John Carpenter and eschews anything a bit more slow or pensive. Having Austin Wintory's AC score short shrifted in the same was his Journey score had been a few years earlier felt like a crime. I loved the Ori soundtrack over the other nominees but I'd be hard pressed to vote for it if all I'd heard was that short sample over any of those other 80s inspired blood pumpers.
I'm not arguing over the quality of their picks, but I find this section hard to listen to as its nothing but gut takes, not to mention the crew seems to acknowledge how subjective and petty this argument became. I hope this category gets overhauled or removed next year.
VII's countless, unique, non-reusable pre-rendered backgrounds alone would cost so much money to reproduce in HD and in 3D (and based on that Midgar trailer, that's exactly what they're doing).
Games just aren't that big and varied anymore, and when they are, they do so by being economical with their assets (reusable assets, modular pieces, or how all of The Witcher 3 has roughly the same vibe/climate -- ditto for Fallout 4).
It's the same reason a game like Uncharted or The Order is only 6-15 hours long -- those unique, one-off assets are expensive.
It's not that FFVII was too big in terms of land mass, or that the play count was that high, but rather the density and variety to the art within. Not to mention VII's script was nearly ten times the size of FFXIII and we all know how that turned out.
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