Last night I was at the Video Games Unplugged: Symphony of Legends concert, which was hosted by Scott Kurtz, Kris Straub and Wil Wheaton, and featured the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra playing music from some of the greatest games ever. So how was it?
- First song was the Halo theme. Sounded perfect and great way to open the show
- Kris asks Wil what it was like “working under that captain on that ship”. Wil gets trolled, because Kris was actually referring to the time he starred in “Love Boat” for one episode!
- Then a piece from Gravity Rush. The score is good, but the game looks so trippy!
- We then get music from Blizzards trio. Can’t comment on WoW and Diablo III that much, they did play the Hyperion Overture from Starcraft, sounded slightly off. Wished they went with Wings of Liberty instead.
- Next up, “Counterattack” from Shadow of the Collosus. Kris quips that he can’t play the game because he is scared of monsters, swords and horses, while Scott says it’s because (Scott) is a collosus himself and doesn’t appreciate guys climbing on him and attacking his weak points.
- Two tracks from Bioshock 2. One is Eleanor’s Lullabye, can’t remember the other one.
- Finally Uncharted is up. This is the one which I was looking forward to all night. First track is “Atlantis of the Sands” from the Uncharted 3 OST, it sounds PERFECT.
- Then it’s the series’ theme song, Nate’s Theme. Drumming doesn’t sound right at all. ARGHHH DISSAPPOINT
- God of War is next. Scott jokes that the MSO will do a complete playthrough of the game on stage, but since there are kids in the audience they have to remove all the violence. We get a 3 second clip of Kratos walking around and falling through the sky lol. The song was “Isle of Creation” from GoW2.
- Kris and Scott announce that One Winged Angel from Final Fantasy VII is up. There’s a pretty big pop from the crowd. Sounded pretty close to it’s Advent Children mix.
- Skyrim is next and we get a short comic skit based on the Dragonborn trading shouts with some old guy. Pretty funny. The song itself was the main Skyrim theme, they also had the choir from Scotch college, and it sounded amazing.
- Baba Yetu from Civilization 4. Choir did a great job, one of the best songs of the night for me.
- Wil Wheaton says the next song is one of the oldest. I’m thinking Mario? Nope, it’s Secret of Mana! Wil says he was 21 when the game was released in 1994. We actually get 2 tracks, one is the main theme, the other doesn’t sound familiar.
- One of the Soul Calibur V composers comes on stage and gets a pop! We get a medley of themes covering SC1-5, as well as another song covering the music from the cutscenes of SCV. It’s played to a montage of cutscenes from story mode.
- Assassin’s Creed II is next, we get Ezio’s family as well as Venice Rooftops. The latter sounded kinda weird, it almost had an electric guitar vibe to it.
- It’s time for the grand finals of the Symphony of Souls tournament. The premise is that the orchestra will play the music during the battle.
- Wil jokes that it’s a universe first and it’s the 8th greatest thing in his life “I’ve lived in space y’know“, and that he also has an orchestra which follows him at home and plays music when he does stuff. “I have the A-team music when I poop!”
- The last song of the night is the ending credits to Soul Calibur V.
- As conductor Phillip Chu leaves the stage, the audience applauds him back for an encore.
- At first it’s hard to tell…but it’s Metal Gear Solid! We get a medley of the main themes of MGS2 and 3, it sounds great, if slightly off.
- And that’s the end of the show.
Overall it was a good show, but I was disappointed that the sound was amplified and not natural (since the hall couldn’t support it). Other letdowns were Nate’s Theme and the percussion overall, but the rest of the songs were winners.
