Masaharu Iwata – Baroque Original Soundtrack (1998)

Composer: Masaharu Iwata

Tracklist

01. Great Heat 20320514 02:31
02. Into Our Trespasses 01:06
03. Sanctuary 03:04
04. Iraiza 02:47
05. Confusion 03:04
06. A Style Of Baroque 01:13
07. Namu Ami 03:08
08. Little 02:31
09. One Foot In The Grave 03:32
10. Alice in 03:29
11. One 02:40
12. Neverending Cycle 00:57
13. Multiplex 03:59
14. Hold Baroque Inside 04:10
15. Deep Interludium (John Pee) 01:47
16. Baroque 204 Forest (Toshiaki Dakoda) 01:02
17. Baroque 205 Blue (Toshiaki Dakoda) 01:21
18. Baroque 206 Black (Toshiaki Dakoda) 00:37
19. Proto One 03:01
20. Proto Two 02:09
21. Miraculous Loop (Haruko Aoki) 06:36
22. Timelessness 06:32

Baroque is a roguelike role-playing video game developed by Sting Entertainment.

It was originally released for the Sega Saturn in 1998 by Entertainment Software Publishing,

then ported to the PlayStation the following year.

A remake for PlayStation 2 and Wii was released in Japan by Sting Entertainment in 2007 and later overseas in 2008.
Baroque is set in a post-apocalyptic world,

where an experiment to understand the Absolute God caused devastating climate change,

with surviving humans becoming physically twisted by manifestations of guilt.

This experiment was led by a being called Archangel.

The protagonist is guided by Archangel through the Neuro Tower to find the Absolute God and fix the world.

All versions of the game feature dungeon-crawling through randomly-generated floors of the Neuro Tower,

with deaths in the dungeon advancing the narrative.

The original uses a first-person perspective,

while he remake includes a third-person camera and adjustable difficulty levels.
The game was conceived by Kazunari Yonemitsu,

who was involved in multiple aspects of its design and created the narrative.

Originally in production for the PC-9800 series, Yonemitsu's wish for 3D graphics resulted in it shifting to the Saturn.

Its dark tone, a reaction to Yonemitsu's previous work, was influenced by European cinema and film noir.

The gameplay drew inspiration from Torneko no Daibōken: Fushigi no Dungeon.

The music was composed by Masaharu Iwata, who blended ambient noise and sound samples into the tracks.

Baroque was supported with several supplementary products, including a visual novel based on a promotional novella.

The remake featured new staff and several changes,including redone character designs from Kenjiro Suzuki and replacement music by in-house composer Shigeki Hayashi.
The music of Baroque was composed and arranged by Masaharu Iwata,

who had previously worked with Sting Entertainment on Treasure Hunter G.

When asking for music, Yonemitsu requested tracks that did not sound like music,

using the natural sound backgrounds of documentaries as reference

for creating natural emotion in an audience without using a separate musical track.

Sometimes as descriptions, Yonemitsu would send Iwata a short poem,

but even then it was difficult for Iwata to create satisfactory tracks.

When Iwata complained about a lack of reference material, Yonemitsu found some suitable musical tracks,

notably music from the anime Night Head and Adiemus albums by Karl Jenkins.

The tracks were designed to be listened to alongside the in-game sound effects.
The first song created for the soundtrack was "Sanctuary".

Originally planned as a story location theme, it was reused as a dungeon track.

While an opening theme was created by in-house composer Toshiaki Sakoda,

Iwata was asked to create a new opening theme.

Something he was able to do on the project that was new to him

was adding in sound effects to increase the ambience impact of his tracks.

The track was half a minute too long, so in-game it was cut short while the album release featured the full track.

The track "Confusion" was made entirely with sound effect samples.

He considered his strangest theme to be the track "Namu Ami", which he described as a meaningless Buddhist-like chant.

His last song was the staff roll "Hold Baroque Inside", which was a subdued piece based on the game's story themes.

Iwata described both the game's content and the music he had to create for it as entirely new to him at the time,

and was impressed by Yonemitsu's vision despite not understanding it at times.

Yonemitsu named all the tracks.

Memory