The Last Guardian ‘Mini Soundtrack’ App (Review)

With The Last Guardian (actually, really, finally) shipping this week I was able to redeem one of the Amazon pre-order bonuses ahead of time, a 4-song Mini Soundtrack. It serves as a preview of both the game’s orchestral score by composer Takeshi Furukawa ^[1] and the ‘Last Guardian Composer’s Choice PS4 Music App’ that Sony announced ^[2] in early November. Let’s take a look at the app and the music inside.

As expected, the music app offers a visual complement to the score by way of a scrolling slideshow of screenshots. It’s not a fancy visualization but, hey, it’s something to look at while listening. The player itself stays out of the way, vanishing from the screen after a few seconds of inactivity. You can view titles, track numbers, composer and length while the current song is displayed in a progress bar at the bottom of the screen. L1/R1 navigate tracks, X pauses and there’s an option to simply loop the entire playlist. Finally, by pressing the Options button you can choose Download Tracklist which will copy the 320kbps MP3 files to a USB device for playback away from the PlayStation 4.

The tracklist itself is also as expected. The themes we’ve heard in the game’s numerous trailers are present in “Overture: Lore” and “Epilogue” with vocals from the Trinity Boys Choir and swelling, melancholic orchestral melodies. As with the soundtracks to all of Fumito Ueda’s games there’s also a somber, darker back end to the music that counters the soaring themes.

The two new tracks are “Homeward” — a short flute melody with a gentle choral backing — and “Falling Bridge” that sounds like it accompanies a very specific moment in the game. The strings charge into the song before our cat-bird hero, Trico, seems to sweep in with a soaring melody and save the day. The two motifs fight back and forth for the remainder of the song making for the most exciting music we’ve heard from The Last Guardian yet.

If the game itself or the Mini Soundtrack app win you over you can pick up the full 17-track soundtrack from the PlayStation Store for $11.99 ^[3] with the same slideshow music player interface and MP3 export function. If you’re after something a little more physical then there’s the upcoming vinyl release ^[4] from iam8bit that’ll be shipping out in early 2017.