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''Nier'' is an action role-playing video game developed by Cavia and published by Square Enix in 2010. The music of ''Nier'' was composed by Keiichi Okabe with members of his studio, Monaca, Kakeru Ishihama and Keigo Hoashi, and Takafumi Nishimura of Cavia. The soundtrack has inspired the release of four official albums by Square Enix—an official soundtrack album and three albums of arrangements—along with two mini-albums included as pre-order bonuses for the Japanese versions of the game and two licensed EPs of jazz arrangements. The original soundtrack was highly praised; reviewers noted it as one of the best video game soundtracks of the year, praising the originality of the compositions and the beauty of Emi Evans' vocal work. The first arranged album, while also warmly received, was perceived by critics to be weaker than the original and not long enough to stand up to the expectations created by the success of the original. The first three albums sold well enough to be recorded on the Japanese Oricon music charts, reaching number 24 for the original soundtrack, 59 for the first arranged album, and position number 77 for the second. ==Development== The soundtrack to ''Nier'' was composed by a collaboration of the studio Monaca, consisting of Keiichi Okabe, Kakeru Ishihama, and Keigo Hoashi, along with Takafumi Nishimura from Cavia, the game's developer. Okabe served as the lead composer and as the director for the project as a whole. Okabe was brought onto the project when the concept for the game was first being devised, and worked intermittently on the soundtrack for the next three years until its release. The music for the game was generally composed entirely separate from the development of the game. Often, elements of the game were modified to match the music, rather than the other way around. Some tracks were used in ways that the composers did not envision, such as "Grandma", which was expected to be used in the prologue of the game but was instead chosen as a boss battle theme. The music was designed for different motifs to appear in various arrangements throughout the soundtrack, and also to convey a sense of sadness even during the "thrilling" tracks. Okabe was allowed a great deal of freedom regarding what the music was to sound like; game director Taro Yoko's main request was that he use a lot of vocal works.〔 The vocals and lyrics were provided by vocalist Emi Evans (Emiko Rebecca Evans), a singer from England living in Tokyo. She is the singer for the band freesscape, and had previously worked on video game projects such as the ''Etrian Odyssey'' arrange albums.〔 The Monaca team had met her when considering her for a prior project, and Okabe wanted to work with her on ''Nier''.〔 She was approached a few months after the initial meeting in Autumn 2008 to be the vocalist for the soundtrack. In addition to singing, Evans was asked to write her own lyrics in futuristic languages. The composers gave her preliminary version of songs and the style they wished the language to be in, such as Scottish Gaelic or French, and she invented the words. Evans wrote songs in versions of Scottish Gaelic, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, English and Japanese, and wrote "Song of the Ancients" in an entirely fictional language. She wrote that song by listening to songs in as many languages as possible and jumbling them up together. For the other languages, she tried to imagine what they would sound like after 1000 years of drifting.〔 Okabe did not want to use traditional lyrics, as he felt they would clash with the design of the world in the game, and wanted to use a variety of languages to represent the open nature of the game's world. He also did not want easily recognizable lyrics to be sung in the background while the characters were speaking, and for any noticeable words to instead evoke emotions in the player.〔 Evans only knew English, Japanese, and French when she began the project; she listened to the other languages on YouTube to learn the rhythms and sounds of the languages and then mixed and changed them.〔 Okabe largely allowed Evans to decide how to integrate the lyrics with the early forms of the songs, and as he usually did not know where the songs would be used in the game gave her only light direction as to the emotional tone for the songs. The composers often would modify the songs in later revisions to follow how Evans had sung for that song.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Music of Nier」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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