Battlefield 2042
Year: 2021
Type: Original Soundtrack (OST)
Composer(s): Hildur Guðnadóttir, Sam Slater
Number of tracks: 14
Sad Leftovers
I was so excited when the first trailers for Battlefield 2042 came out: big battles in the near future, weapon modifications, top graphics and a mode that lets me play the old games in new splendor. Against my better judgment, I was hyped. Luckily, this only lasted until the open beta, in which players were presented with an unfinished, fun-tomb that wouldn't have benefited from an extra year of development. But no, it's EA, it's Christmas time, so get it out and fix it later.
Fortunately, I didn't get carried away with a pre-order and can now make my buddy Marvin aware of the bad purchase with a fatherly "I told you so, my boy" attitude - at least for the time being. Sure, the game will be playable at some point and will be fun in its best moments, but I'm simply not in the mood for unfinished games that I might only be able to play months or years after release, once the hype is over and only the cracks with over 1000 hours of playtime are still romping around on the servers.
Be that as it may. Fortunately, I still have the usual fantastic soundtrack to make the waiting time bearable. After all, this has always been a flagship of the Battlefield-series, which has always been accompanied by great music despite the multiplayer approach. Songs like the MEC Loading Theme from Battlefield 2, Shuhia Taiba from Battlefield 2142 or The Storm of Bad Company 2, which got me warmed up while loading the maps for the round at medium level.
But I also don't want to ignore the scores for the single-player campaigns from Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4 should not be overlooked. Their stories are extremely easy to forget, but the music is all the more memorable. First and foremost, however, is the Main Theme, which established the musical tenor of the series with its marching rhythm and fanfares in the first game Battlefield 1942 from 2002. It can be found in different variations in pretty much every installment of the main series - I'll leave out experiments like Battlefield Heroes and Battlefield Hardline at this point - and I confess, I've never been as hooked on a game (with the exception of Skyrim) as the moment when the theme sounded in an ear-shredding dubstep version in the trailer for Battlefield 3 a good 10 years ago. Oh, sweet memories.
However, I won't have any sweet memories when I think back to what DICE came up with for the Battlefield 2042-score. It comes from Icelandic composer Hildur Guðnadóttir, whose unmistakable style has already added audible character to films such as Joker and the series Chernobyl . Unfortunately, this doesn't work at all in the game. The soundtrack comes across as a desperate attempt to sell the game's dystopian scenario as a mixture of Icelandic melancholy and industrial coldness: Cellos meet distortion and the resulting disharmony makes me want to point the gun at my own head rather than at the enemies. If you're looking for a taste, just listen to Tipping Points or The Observation of Beautiful Forms . Which is not to say that it is poorly crafted or doesn't have a certain charm. If it were the score of a space exploration game, for example, I would probably be less critical.
But for an action-packed multiplayer romp, the score is simply no fun and fits seamlessly into the current state of the game. And that's not even the worst thing. The worst thing is really the main theme Battlefield 2042, which various people have already ranted about online. I recommend this video from the Angry Joe channel.
Even if it's not reflected in the rating: I hate it, because it's emblematic of what EA has done to what was once a great franchise that doesn't listen to its fans, but chases current trends. That's why I'll leave the last words of this review to my most loyal (and probably only) reader, who not only describes the theme of the latest Battlefield-installment, but also absolutely aptly the development of the series as such:
Sounds like you've put a CD with the Battlefield main theme into a device with super bad speakers and turned it up. But you didn't notice that the CD had a crack and then it started to scratch. Then you hit the speakers every time to make it sound good. This whole process was recorded and this is what came out.
Jacko ‚The Muh‘ Thiele, music critic
| No. | Title | Artist(s) | Ratings |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Orbital | Hildur Guðnadóttir; Sam Slater |  |
| 02 | The Observation of Beautiful Forms | Hildur Guðnadóttir; Sam Slater |  |
| 03 | Irreversible | Hildur Guðnadóttir; Sam Slater |  |
| 04 | Between the Bows | Hildur Guðnadóttir; Sam Slater | |
| 05 | Wall Jazz | Hildur Guðnadóttir; Sam Slater | |
| 06 | Load Bearing | Hildur Guðnadóttir; Sam Slater | |
| 07 | When Does a Country Stop Being a Country? | Hildur Guðnadóttir; Sam Slater | |
| 08 | 5 Degrees of Warming | Hildur Guðnadóttir; Sam Slater | |
| 09 | Hauled Over the Coals | Hildur Guðnadóttir; Sam Slater | |
| 10 | Wet Bulb | Hildur Guðnadóttir; Sam Slater | |
| 11 | Hourglass | Hildur Guðnadóttir; Sam Slater | |
| 12 | Shipping Forecast | Hildur Guðnadóttir; Sam Slater | |
| 13 | Tipping Points | Hildur Guðnadóttir; Sam Slater |  |
| 14 | Battlefield 2042 | Hildur Guðnadóttir; Sam Slater | |
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