“The Calm Before the Storm”
The talented K.C. from crowdsourceinspiration (an awesome group of musicians that challenge bloggers to submit original song requests about any subject) got in touch with me a little while back asking me if I had a game or character I wanted to see immortalized in song. It wasn’t even a question that I wanted to hear something related to Resident Evil; the real feat was trying to find something in the series worth laying down notes for. When music came to mind, RE2’s save room theme was the first melody tickling my brain, and this idea of solitude and safety permeated while K.C. responded to the fact that these rooms typically signified something god-awful waiting around the corner for you.
After a few interweb conversations – and given that my musical inclination is rated somewhere between “none” and “mocking laughter” – he went and made something wonderful out of my incoherent rambling about a simple game design choice that has gone the way of the virtual dinosaur thanks to checkpoints and autosaves. Thanks again, K.C.
Read his intro to the song below and check out his lyrics here.
This song answers a brilliant request from kevinapocalypse at the great gaming blog theredherb. He suggested that I write a song for the true hero of early Resident Evil games: The Save Room. These rare rooms had a typewriter for saving and an inventory box for swapping items. After dealing with the undead chaos, these rooms felt like “sanctuaries” to him. He also noted the beautiful music in these rooms, which I listened to much this week and like to think affected my writing (I had about a dozen creepier riffs that didn’t make the cut for this). So, I always push a request’s envelope, right? I agree with him that these places are sanctuaries—as the room with a save point is in many games. But there is another side to the coin. Programmers don’t give us a save point to congratulate us for our hard work; it’s usually a sign that something very bad is about to happen. Thus, save rooms are sanctuaries, but they are also just the calm before the storm. I dedicate this song to theredherb and also to these rad RE blogs I’ve been following for some time: hellyesesidentevilseries, residentevil-fanart, girls-kill-zombies-deader, resievilfan, and f***yeahresidentevil. Free downloads of this track are available here. Enjoy RE fans and fellow-gamers! — Kavalier Calm