Nier is an action role-playing video game developed by Cavia and published by Square Enix in 2010. The music of Nier was composed by Keiichi Okabe with members of his studio, Monaca, Kakeru Ishihama and Keigo Hoashi, and Takafumi Nishimura of Cavia. The soundtrack has inspired the release of four official albums by Square Enix—an official soundtrack album and three albums of arrangements—along with two mini-albums included as pre-order bonuses for the Japanese versions of the game and two licensed EPs of jazz arrangements.
The original soundtrack was highly praised; reviewers noted it as one of the best video game soundtracks of the year, praising the originality of the compositions and the beauty of Emi Evans' vocal work. The first arranged album, while also warmly received, was perceived by critics to be weaker than the original and not long enough to stand up to the expectations created by the success of the original. The first three albums sold well enough to be recorded on the Japanese Oricon music charts, reaching number 24 for the original soundtrack, 59 for the first arranged album, and position number 77 for the second.
The soundtrack for Nier's sequel, Nier: Automata, was released worldwide on March 29, 2017. Returning collaborators include Keiichi Okabe and the Monaca team on composing duties and Emi Evans on vocals, along with several other singers and lyricists. Nier: Automata Original Soundtrack was highly reviewed by critics, and the album peaked at number 2 on the Oricon charts. A third game in the series, Nier Reincarnation, was available as a live service mobile game between 2021 and 2024. The music was primarily handled by Okabe, and was not released as an album.
Development
Nier
The soundtrack to Nier was composed by a collaboration of the studio Monaca, consisting of Keiichi Okabe, Kakeru Ishihama, and Keigo Hoashi, along with Takafumi Nishimura from Cavia, the game's developer. Okabe served as the lead composer and as the director for the project as a whole. Okabe was brought onto the project when the concept for the game was first being devised, and worked intermittently on the soundtrack for the next three years until its release. The music for the game was generally composed legal entirely separate from the development of the game. Often, elements of the game were modified to match the music, rather than the other way around. Some tracks were used in ways that the composers did not envision, such as "Grandma", which was expected to be used in the prologue of the game but was instead chosen as a boss battle theme. The music was designed for different motifs to appear in various arrangements throughout the soundtrack, and also to convey a sense of sadness even during the "thrilling" tracks. Okabe was allowed a great deal of freedom regarding what the music was to sound like; game director Taro Yoko's main request was that he use a lot of vocal works.
The vocals and lyrics were provided by vocalist Emi Evans (Emiko Rebecca Evans), a singer from England living in Tokyo. She is the singer for the band freesscape, and had previously worked on video game projects such as the Etrian Odyssey arrange albums. The Monaca team had met her when considering her for a prior project, and Okabe wanted to work with her on Nier. She was approached a few months after the initial meeting in Autumn 2008 to be the vocalist for the soundtrack. In addition to singing, Evans was asked to write her own lyrics in futuristic languages. The composers gave her preliminary version of songs and the style they wished the language to be in, such as Scottish Gaelic or French, and she invented the words. Evans wrote songs in versions of Scottish Gaelic, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, English and Japanese, and wrote "Song of the Ancients" in an entirely fictional language. She wrote that song by listening to songs in as many languages as possible and jumbling them up together. For the other languages, she tried to imagine what they would sound like after 1000 years of drifting.
Okabe did not want to use traditional lyrics, as he felt they would clash with the design of the world in the game, and wanted to use a variety of languages to represent the open nature of the game's world. He also did not want easily recognizable lyrics to be sung in the background while the characters were speaking, and for any noticeable words to instead evoke emotions in the player. Evans only knew English, Japanese, and French when she began the project; she listened to the other languages on YouTube to learn the rhythms and sounds of the languages and then mixed and changed them. Okabe largely allowed Evans to decide how to integrate the lyrics with the early forms of the songs, and as he usually did not know where the songs would be used in the game gave her only light direction as to the emotional tone for the songs. The composers often would modify the songs in later revisions to follow how Evans had sung for that song.
Nier: Automata Composer Keiichi Okabe returned as lead composer with his studio band Monaca, alongside fellow members Keigo Hoashi, Kuniyuki Takahashi, and Kakeru Ishihama. The score was influenced by classical music, while recalling elements used for Nier such as the overall sense of melancholy. A change from the previous score was a shift to portraying a more mechanical and brutal theme and environment than Nier, which had focused on grasslands and villages. Another factor was the open world environment: rather than a single looping track, Okabe created multiple hard and soft tracks that transitioned into each other depending on situation and environment. Balancing of the music was carried out using the digital audio workstation (DAW) Pro Tools. Another prominent return was Emi Evans, who provided vocals for the first game's soundtrack. Additional male vocals were provided by Shotaro Seo. In addition, a theme song was created for the game, with versions sung by both Evans and new singer J'Nique Nicole. Nicole and Nami Nakagawa joined with Evans to form a three-part chorus for some of the musical work, including a boss theme featured in the game. Several songs from the Nier soundtrack were arranged for Nier: Automata.
The general sound design was handled by Masato Shindo, who was faced with a challenge new to the PlatinumGames staff: in their previous projects sound echoes had been handled by individual settings created by the team, but that would not work properly in an open world setting due to its scale. Instead, Shindo designed a realistic soundscape using a system to manage echoes in real time, determining how much reverberation to generate based on current surroundings. Sound implementation was handled by Masami Ueda, and it was a greater amount of work than he had experienced on any previous project. One of the factors that helped with the smooth implementation was Ueda's previous encounters and good working relationship with Okabe.
Nier Reincarnation A third game in the series, Nier Reincarnation, was available as a live service mobile game between 2021 and 2024. The music was again primarily handled by Okabe. His contribution was around twenty songs, all original and not incorporating music from earlier Nier titles. Shotaro Seo also acted as composer, and co-arranger with Okabe. Due to being created for a mobile game, the music was made less dramatic than earlier home console entries, with a minimalist ambient style compared by Okabe to "diving into a spiritual world". On Yoko's request, each song covered a variety of styles while maintaining the established atmosphere of the Nier universe. The musical style was influenced by the game's "nostalgic" atmosphere, which was compared to a fairy tale atmosphere. Rather than having strong melodies, the music was designed to be "smooth". Vocals and chorus were handled by Kocho, Yukino Orita, Saki Ishii, and Seo. Vocals were restricted to Weapon Story and battle tracks.
For the second story arc, Okabe and Seo returned as composers and arrangers. The new music focused on strings and woodwinds to match the change to the story's atmosphere. Yoko requested a broader musical style for the second arc's score, with the instrumentation becoming less ambient and the battle theme incorporating electronica. For one story, they also created a new version of "Normandy", a theme created for a stage play related to Nier: Automata. Vocals were provided by Kocho, Seo, Orita, and Saki Nakae. The main theme, representing the two siblings, had a complex interplay of vocal parts between Orita and Seo. For the third arc, Seo co-composed with Kuniyuki Takahashi. Kocho, Orita and Nakae returned to provide vocals and chorus.
Releases
Nier
NieR Gestalt & Replicant Original Soundtrack
The soundtrack to Nier is largely composed of melancholy acoustic pieces which heavily feature vocals by Emi Evans. Of the 43 tracks included in the released soundtrack album, only 9 do not have any vocal component to them; these are the four versions each of "Dispossession" and "Yonah", as well as "Dance of the Evanescent". With the exception of "Ashes of Dreams", the lyrics are not intended to mean anything.
For "Ashes of Dreams", Evans convinced the composers that one song in the soundtrack should have recognizable lyrics rather than futuristic English as they originally planned. Evans was given a list of Japanese words to use, which she then translated for the English, French, and Scottish Gaelic versions of the song. The song and its variants were the last to be recorded. Evans found "Ashes of Dreams" to be the most difficult song to write on the soundtrack, as she had difficulty writing lyrics that met the composers' criteria of despair and lack of hope.
"Hills of Radiant Wind" is one of the few upbeat songs on the largely dark soundtrack; for that piece Evans sang in a version of Portuguese in a style meant to sound like a spirit floating on the wind. For "Grandma", she sang in a French style, trying to "put in as much anguish and melancholy" as possible; she created the song in a single recording, and it is "one of the most memorable songs" that she has sung. "The Wretched Automatons" is sung in a variant of English and was recorded prior to the addition of the mechanical sounds that run throughout the track, while "Kainé" is in a version of Gaelic.
Square Enix released a soundtrack album of music from the game, titled NieR Gestalt & Replicant Original Soundtrack, on April 21, 2010. The two-disc, 2:30:09-long album has the catalog numbers of SQEX-10189/90. As preorder bonuses for Nier Gestalt and Nier Replicant, the two versions of the game released in Japan, two mini-albums, Nier Gestalt Mini Album and Nier Replicant Mini Album, were included. Each one contains five tracks from the full soundtrack album; Gestalt corresponds with tracks 1 and 4 from disc 1, 8 and 13 from disc 2, and an electronic version of "Kainé" titled "Kainé / Rain of Light", while Replicant encompasses track 3 from disc 2, tracks 2 and 7 from disc 1, track 1 from disc 2, and a medley of several tracks. Gestalt is 18:11 long, and Replicant 17:11. A book of sheet music of piano arrangements of tracks from the game by Okabe was published by KMP on April 22, 2011. The book, NieR Gestalt & Replicant Official Score Book, contains 25 arrangements in 112 pages. Guitar arrangements of "Song of the Ancients / Devola" and "Yonah / Strings Ver." by Yuji Sekiguchi were included in the Square Enix Official Best Collection guitar solo sheet music book, published by KMP in May 2011.