Overbored
Yarr harr harr you buccaneers! Grab your cutlasses and take to the rigging! Because Flint: Treasure of Oblivion has finally been released and - wait, what? You've never heard of this pirate tactics RPG? Well, I don't blame you. After all, hardly anyone has heard of the French developer Savage Level's debut game, which was released almost two months ago. If the tests are to be believed, we haven't missed out on a Black Flag-competitor either, but instead the keel is leaning more towards Skull & Bones.
Into Davy Jones' Locker with me, in the end I'm only here for the music anyway, so let's do it! The ten tracks of the OST were written by the American Winifred Phillips (love the name). She has been working in the video game industry since 1992 and has not only won various awards there, but also with her textbook 'A Composer's Guide to Game Music'. I know her best from a few (bad) tracks from the first God of War, the Little Big Planet-series and the rather good score for the Assassin spin-off Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation.
The almost half-hour musical voyage in Flint: Treasure of Oblivion is unfortunately far from being a real catch. Phillips may not suffer a shipwreck, but the music isn't really special either. It sounds exactly like what we expect when we think of pirates: a bit of accordion, a few strings and thundering drums.
We've heard this before in Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, Sid Meier’s Pirates! or Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew - to name just a few. Even the short trips to the pirate city of Bilgewater in Ruined King: A League of Legends Story and the LoL-event on Butcher’s Bridge in Season 5 are more gripping. Heck, even Phillips did it better in Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation than here ... but well, that wasn't a pure pirating adventure.
Although the composer tries to bring a bit of variety to the perpetual romance of pirates at sea with smaller additions such as vocals (The Pirate’s Curse, Skull and Bones) and electric guitars (Treasure of Oblivion), unfortunately there is no treasure to be found here. Flint: Treasure of Oblivion is therefore not a real treasure and is perhaps better left in oblivion.
