Torment: The Music of Mark Morgan Returns

While the news that inXile Entertainment’s Planescape: Torment spiritual successor will be scored by Mark Morgan was a welcome surprise for anyone who is familiar with his work, there are no doubt many video game fans who haven’t kept up on the various titles he has scored during his career. But thanks to this blog post on Game Delver, we have an informative summary to read through:

Moving on, we have an excellent piece from Shattered Steel, Bioware’s first published game.

Again, Shattered Steel is another game that I have not played, though I have definitely heard of it. I’ve always been curious to see what pre-RPG (aka the other 98% of their catalogue not named MDK2) Bioware looked like. Though my love of Bioware has waned over the last few years, I’d love to see them do an action-RPG with mechs. It would give them an excuse to play around with first person at least.

And if they did, I would hope they bring back Mark Morgan. I was weary of this track at first, given the repetition, but I think the rest of the song builds around it perfectly. It really becomes pretty epic, pretty quickly. I can definitely imagine it backing up some serious mech combat and getting my blood pumping.

Now for the big three games that I do know Mark Morgan’s work from: Fallout 1, 2, and Planescape: Torment.

I think the reason why I didn’t remember Mark Morgan’s name as well as say Nobuo Uetmatsu for the Final Fantasy series or Jeremy Soule for the Elder Scrolls series is because all of these songs perfectly capture and blend into the mood of the game. With only a few exceptions (such as (Deionarra’s Theme) from Planescape), his music is not what I’d want to listen to outside of its exact context.