This is a review of the video game soundtrack Halo 3: ODST by Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori.
“I like the originality of the Halo scores. They have always felt a bit different from other game and movie scores.”
Halo has to go down as one of the most successful game series ever and they have clearly done almost everything right. Luckily for us, the Halo series has featured some great music and knock on wood, everything has been released. That is really saying something as a lot, and I mean a LOT of games that has great music, never get a soundtrack release. This is a crying shame and releasing the soundtrack with the game itself is getting to be a popular sport. I don’t like it as I would just love to have the soundtrack and not the game itself. Yes, we do exist! Anyhow, the composers of the first three Halo games are back Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori. That is good news, very good news in fact. Halo Wars by Stephen Rippy was a bit of a disappointment so it wasn’t a big surprise that they chose to go with O’Donell and Salvatori.
Track List
CD1
01. Overture (***)
02. The Rookie (***)
03. More Than His Share (***)
04. Deference For Darkness (****)
05. The Menagerie (***)
06. Asphalt And Ablution (****)
07. Traffic Jam (****)
08. Neon Night (***)
09. The Office Of Naval Intelligence (***)
CD2
01. Bits And Pieces (****)
02. Skyline (****)
03. No Stone Unturned (****)
04. One Way Ride (***)
05. The Light At The End (****)
06. Data Hive (***)
07. Special Delivery (***)
08. Finale (****)
Less Action
It has always surprised me that even though the nature of the Halo games are pure multiplayer action fun, yet the music never really reflect that fully. The first Halo game had some nice action pieces, but there seems to be less and less of that in the later scores. Halo 3: ODST is no different in that respect. What is different, is the lack of choirs as that has always been a major ingredient in all Halo scores. There simply isn’t any here. Good or bad? A little of both. I am a fan of choirs, but I don’t see it as a requirement to make a great score.
Almost 2 Hours of Music
There’s almost 2 hours of music here spread across 2 CDs so there’s plenty to get you Halo (and music) fans going. The sound is very electronic, very alien from the start. They even have included some special effects (rain) in the first cue on CD1 called ‘Overture’. The easy beginning with the human tones soon turns to aliens and mystery. ODST stands for Orbital Drop Shock Troopers by the way. The music is very atmospheric and in-sync with the game, but an outside would question it’s validity because it sounds like music from an explore-type strategy game like Settlers or Civilization.
There’s more interesting stuff here than previously. The sound quality is overall very good and there are even some cues that would pass the muster of orchestral music fans. The piano is used more widely here and in the cues ‘Deferance for Darkness’ and ‘The Light at the End’ the beginning piano theme has a very Japanese anime sound to it. ‘No Stone Unturned’, ‘Asphalt and Ablution’ and ‘Finale’ has interesting thematic stuff with the piano as the main character. Especially the beginning of ‘Finale’ sounds a bit like Thomas Newman actually. This is not a bad thing, and although O’Donnell and Salvatori mostly do their own thing, it shows that they can get inspiration from the masters of film music as well.
Conclusion
I like the originality of the Halo scores. They have always felt a bit different from other game and movie scores. They have a special feel to them and you can almost immediately recognize music from Halo if you happened to hear some parts of it. The bad thing is that this mix between electronic and orchestral sounds kind of feel redundant at some point. There’s nothing about Halo 3: ODST that grabs me and truly moves me. A good score, and that’s ok, I just want a little more feeling next time.
Let me know what you think of the score in the comments section below!
Listen to Halo 3: ODST by Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori below:
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Funny thing, as you mentioned “Overture” with rain effects. Jeremy Soule had rain effects in “Prey Overture” as well
Hey, rain effects are cool!