How Boss Music Works in Pikmin 3 Deluxe

{What I Love!} Hello! I’m Scruffy, and today, I’m getting back to my roots… stems, leaves, etc., by talking about Pikmin. Pikmin 3 has come to Nintendo Switch as Pikmin 3 Deluxe, complete with all its DLC content from the original, plus new side story content, new difficulty modes easier and harder, in-game achievements, and a full Piklopedia of all the creatures you encounter while exploring. Whether you’re new to the Pikmin series or even have Pikmin 3 before, I highly recommend it already. And today, I’m talking about the soundtrack: specifically, how the various boss themes in the game work. Boss music in games has to be especially engaging, right? A pivotal point in the game’s progression requires some pivotal music to spur on the fight. And what better way to do that than with adaptive music, that changes according to the status and parameters of the boss fight? The Pikmin series is known for music that adds, removes, or changes layers based on what you and your Pikmin are doing, and since Pikmin 2, boss music has been a culmination of that, stringing together fragments of music into a seamless composition that scores actions right as they happen. So, let’s run through the bosses of Pikmin 3 Deluxe and see how the music is structured, where it continues Pikmin 2’s systems and where it creates its own. The first boss we’ll talk about can be found at the end of the demo for Pikmin 3 Deluxe, but beyond that, this video contains spoilers for Pikmin 3’s story, so watch at your own risk. Anyway, let’s shine some light on that first boss, the Armored Mawdad. The first thing to happen is the boss’s cinematic intro, which first builds tension through a low suspenseful texture as the boss reveals its frightening size and comes out of hiding. ["cinematic intro" plays] Then, when it readies itself to attack, the tone of the fight commences with this cue from a full virtual orchestra: ["battle start" plays] What comes next is what I’m going to call the “big boss theme,” which is shared by several bosses in the game. But how does it begin? The game has several options, actually. You see, the big boss theme has a strict tempo, 155 BPM, and at each click, it checks what’s happening in the battle. If certain flags have been activated, the corresponding music cue gets played on the next available beat. Some are looping melodies, and can get interrupted on any beat, and some are little transitional pieces that are only a bar long and have to play out in full. When nothing else is happening in the battle, the default is the following loop: ["battle loop" plays] And when that goes on long enough, you get the following melody to go along with it: ["battle melody" plays] It’s brash, it’s mainly in brass, the beats are in groups of seven, and it’s angular and atonal, at odds with the rest of the music in the game. Plus, it establishes militant snare drum rhythms to drive the tempo, and to evoke commanding your Pikmin like a brigade. But it’s only a 30-second loop, and it doesn’t really need to be that long, because in less than 30 seconds, the boss is going to do something else. In fact, the Armored Mawdad normally starts the battle with a forward attack, trying to catch Pikmin in its mandibles. So you’ll actually hear this attack loop instead. ["attack loop" plays] The low strings and brass drop out and woodwinds get more hectic, to alert you to scramble your Pikmin out of danger. Now, things get interesting, what comes next is conditional on how this attack pans out. If the Mawdad fails to trap any Pikmin, it plays the following transition: ["defended/boss defense transition" plays] This also plays whenever it shakes attacking Pikmin off of its body. And you can hear, that would go back to the default loop. Now, if it catches some Pikmin, you have a small window of time before it eats them! During that time, the music turns to this more dangerous loop: ["Pikmin in danger loop" plays] The low brass and especially that bass drum hit are so exhilarating, while the high woodwinds are now the cries of help from Pikmin in danger. If the Mawdad is able to eat some Pikmin, the music accents Pikmin deaths with the following stinger: ["Pikmin death stinger" plays] But eventually, there will either be no Pikmin left in danger, or you’ll free them by attacking the Mawdad enough to shake everyone off. If you lost some Pikmin during the “danger” loop, the music gets back to default via this transition: ["out of danger, Pikmin lost" plays] Whereas if you lost no Pikmin during the “danger” loop, you get a more celebratory transition that hints at a major key: ["Out of danger, no Pikmin lost" plays] And finally, when you defeat the Mawdad for good, it enters a cutscene where it writhes and spits out some treasure for you to collect, and then dies, with the following final stinger: ["boss defeated stinger" plays] Interestingly not a celebratory sound, more just slowing down the tempo and accenting the intense death of the giant beast. But hey, you beat it! That was a lot of musical information just now, and a far more complex system than it presents. But that’s precisely the point: to make the music fluid with the ups and downs of battle without breaking immersion. Here’s a flow chart of the Mawdad battle music. Later bosses in the game will have some similar flow charts, with some key differences and additions. But the next boss in the game has entirely different music and adaptivity. Are you ready? It’s the Vehemoth Phosbat, the boss of the Distant Tundra. Also my favorite enemy in Pikmin 3. This boss is mainly in the dark, using camouflage to remain virtually invisible, and you can’t really attack it without exposing it to light. So, you’re kind of stuck trying to turn on all the lights in its lair, an icy cave, while you know that it’s present and can at any moment try to vacuum up your Pikmin. This is a very different battle scenario, so the music is much different, and it’s more representative of your progress through the battle. Instead of waiting for cues at every tick of the tempo, like the “big boss theme” did, this “Phosbat theme” fades in and out different layers of music at any time. It starts with a creepy theme for being stranded in the dark, using some of the instruments you’ve been hearing in the greater Distant Tundra. ["Phosbat cave (all lights off)" plays] If the Vehemoth Phosbat isnear, even if it doesn’t attack, this eerie drone and drum machine layer gets added. ["Phosbat cave (all lights off, boss near)" plays] I like to think this is a combination of synth drones representing the Phosbat, and the drum rhythms representing Captain Charlie trapped inside the Phosbat’s belly. Now, if you turn on any of the four small light bulbs using Yellow Pikmin, most likely, you’ll ground the Vehemoth Phosbat and have a chance to attack. Now that you’ve truly seen the creature you’re dealing with, the music adds some more quirky strings, woodwinds, and percussion for a more abominable theme: ["Phosbat cave (small lights on)" plays] And the Phosbat still remixes it when it’s nearby, even if it’s invisible: ["Phosbat cave (small lights on, boss near)" plays] But, all of this is still stage 1 of the battle, you haven’t gotten your big chance to attack yet. That comes with completing the bridge to a larger, all-encompassing lightbulb, one so bright that you get a cutscene just for activating it, that mirrors other boss transitional music: ["Big bulb activated stinger" plays] Now, the Phosbat has nowhere to hide, so you get this strange melody, kind of a lighthearted corruption of the theme before it: ["Phosbat cave (big light on)" plays] And this one is resolutely in common time signature, now with that snare drum in the background to direct your Pikmin to victory. There are no other transitions to this theme, it plays no matter how the battle goes, until you deplete all the Phosbat’s health. Then you hear the big boss defeated stinger, but with an extension for the Phosbat trying to fly away and escape, only to collide with the big light bulb. ["boss defeated extended stinger" plays] So, here’s a much simpler flow chart for the Phosbat’s fight. It’s a unique boss with a battle pretty much unlike anything else in the series, and so the themes presented here never get revisited. If we want to talk about revisiting themes, we should talk about “mid-bosses.” Mid-bosses are big enemies without the cutscenes and plot advancements of big bosses. Enemies like the Burrowing Snagret. These battles use a remix of boss music from Pikmin 2, and also mimic Pikmin 2’s adaptive system. So we’re once again playing musical fragments in real-time, but where Pikmin 2 played them with MIDI sequences, Pikmin 3 plays them with streamed audio files. Here’s the flowchart to follow along. We start with the boss intro: ["mid-boss intro" plays] Classic. Then we get into the core loop: ["mid-boss default loop" plays] This theme is decidedly more tonal than the big boss theme, it’s more about galvanizing your Pikmin under a driving 5/4 time signature and front-and-center snare drum pattern. From here, not much else occurs unless the mid-boss shakes off your Pikmin, which plays one of four transitional snippets, in the following order: ["attack stingers" play] This also occurs if a mid-boss has the ability to appear suddenly, like the Snagret burrowing up from the ground. And you’ll get this transition if they burrow back in the ground. ["defense stinger" plays] And that's pretty much it, until you defeat the mid-boss and get the tempo-slowing ending, resolving on an F major chord: ["mid-boss defeated stinger" plays] And a timpani roll, that’s cute. As far as a set of possible music cues, it actually has a smaller cardinality than Pikmin 2’s boss theme. But that’s mainly because, unlike Pikmin 3’s big bosses, these mid-bosses don’t really have “attack” and “danger” phases. They just have one fight. But speaking of the big bosses, let’s get back to that track with our next contender—you ready?—the Sandbelching Meerslug, with big lips and a big appetite. This boss battle uses the same system as the Armored Mawdad did, but with some changes. When the battle begins, you have the Meerslug create a sinkhole for its “attack” phase, and then open its lips at the bottom to eat Pikmin during the “danger” phase. But here’s a new addition: if you can successfully deal enough damage to the Meerslug while it’s attacking, such as by feeding it a bomb rock, it will burst out of the ground and become vulnerable to attack, which causes this new, contrastingly chipper melody: ["boss vulnerable loop" plays] It combines the intensity of the “danger” cue with a melody that echoes Pikmin’s main theme, and roots for your side specifically. You know that that’s the point to charge your Pikmin forward. And otherwise, the flowchart works out the same, ending with the same defeat cue as the Armored Mawdad. So, let’s move on! After most likely encountering some more mid-bosses, we have our next big boss: the Scornet Maestro. This fight is a fair bit more scripted than previous fights, and it uses the same flowchart as before, but now we can shed some light on priorities in this chart. See, the Maestro will direct its own army of little bee-like creatures, Scornets, to attack in formation and capture Pikmin, and then they stay off the battlefield with any Pikmin they caught while the Maestro is defenseless and open to attack. Here’s the priority for music: if no Pikmin were captured, you hear the motivating melody to focus on swarming the Maestro. But if even one Pikmin got captured, you hear the “danger” cue throughout the Maestro’s vulnerability, until the little Scornets return and hold the Pikmin in captivity until they either perish, or until you rescue them. So, the danger of losing Pikmin takes precedence over the chance to attack. That makes sense, every Pikmin is worth protecting. But it’s hard to protect them from our next boss on the list, The Quaggled Mireclops, the giant lumbering tripedal monster. Once again, big boss flowchart, but it’s wired a little differently. See, you have to damage its feet to knock it over and get a chance to attack its weak point, the big fruit of a head on top. When you knock it over, you immediately get the “chance to attack” melody, but it’s cut short by the Mireclops’s secret attack, sweeping its big multicolor tongue around to capture and eat Pikmin that try to engage it. And, not through with its secret attacks, it introduces one more new cue when it gets back up. After a galloping attack to try and crush Pikmin with its feet, it’ll slam its entire body into the mud, prompting one transition we haven’t heard before: ["slam attack stinger" plays] Interesting little extra cue. Otherwise, it’s a hard-fought battle and quite a flowchart when it has that many attacks up its sleeve. But, rest assured, the battle does end with the signature boss defeated cue. That’s the last boss to use the “big boss theme,” and interestingly, there’s one cue left unaccounted for that my collaborator, Olimar12345, has found. It’s the following, which sounds like the normal boss theme but stripped of everything but the horn vamp. (Editor's note: We've since realized this is a cue for the Scornet Maestro preparing to attack.) Olimar12345 currently labels it as the “Menu Open” loop, because we thought it would occur when you collect a data file during a boss fight. However, that doesn’t seem to be the case now in Pikmin 3 or Pikmin 3 Deluxe, so we’re left wondering if it was patched out of the game, or if it was meant for some other purpose. That remains a mystery. And speaking of mysterious things, well, we’ve only got one boss left... My Pikmin videos just can’t avoid talking about it, can they? Get ready for: the Plasm Wraith. To keep things brief, I’ll only talk about music when the Plasm Wraith is combatting you. There’s a new adaptive system when you venture inside the Formidable Oak and the Plasm Wraith materializes behind you as its first form: the Mysterious Life-form. This time, it’s not based on the boss’s actions or your progress through the battle, it’s all based around the thing you and the Mysterious Life-form are coveting: Captain Olimar. While his spacesuit is in forced-sleep mode, you have to carry him down through the depths of the Oak without letting the Mysterious Life-form get to him. So, normally, you hear this theme playing, a completely atonal pattern with low basses and bass drum putting horrific urgency in the rhythm. ["default chase loop" plays] And over top, that extraterrestrial melody that plays shy, untuned notes is just icing on the cake. Now if the Life-form gets close to Olimar, you’ll hear the leaders say something as a warning, but I think a more effective warning is the way the music adds this layer of rising strings and a faster rhythm played on anvil. ["Olimar in danger loop" plays] Now that is intense. If you can get away in time, the theme calms back to normal, but if the Mysterious Life-form catches and absorbs Olimar, things get crazy, adding in brass and percussion from the big boss theme to accent the danger of losing Olimar. ["Olimar captured loop" plays] Your priority shifts to fighting the boss just enough to release Olimar and be temporarily dazed, but the music never celebrates. There are no transitional cues, only this simple flowchart of varying but nonzero intensity. Once you successfully extract Olimar from the Oak, you get a cutscene that references a victorious little jingle throughout the Pikmin series. But it’s harmonically imbalanced and the Wraith interrupts it, building tension for: The actual final battle theme. This one’s pretty popular and there’s no adaptivity: this now plays anywhere in the Formidable Oak, until you rescue Olimar from the Plasm Wraith’s final form. And it’s interesting, it combines a more focused, C# minor melody with the chaotic Plasm Wraith motif. And while the time signature changes around between those, the pulse of rhythms from the strings keep things on track. If anything, this battle theme assures you that this is the last item on your flowchart. And, indeed, the only thing left to come after this is the cutscene when you beat the Plasm Wraith and recover Olimar, leading to the final set of cutscenes ending the story. I think it’s appropriate to have that sort of clarity in the final boss theme, where everything about the music is pronouncing finality. But, hang on, I can't wrap this up yet! There's still more content, isn't there? New to Pikmin 3 Deluxe are the side story modes, a prologue and epilogue to the events of the main story. These are far into spoiler territory, I'll do my best not to spoil what bosses appear... But I will say, there is something, near the end of the epilogue, that gets new boss music and an adaptive flowchart that emulates the mid-boss flowchart. Like most of the music for the side stories, it was composed by chamber pop artist Babi, and not only is her music the perfect personality for the Pikmin series, this particular piece also makes some fun references. Here’s the flowchart. It starts with a new intro theme: ["new boss intro" plays] Then it works into a new default loop, that’s quirky and silly, but still echoing the mood of other boss music we’ve heard. It plays no matter where you are in this area. And listen to the melody: ["new boss melody" plays] It references the main theme of Pikmin 1 on that aerophone, and more subtly references the Forest Navel from Pikmin 1 with that dobro. It turns those themes into a boss battle, even! The only adaptive transition at this point is when the boss shakes off Pikmin: ["new boss defense" plays] It’s really a back and forth of attacking and shaking off until the first stage of this boss battle is complete, prompting this little victory theme that is another part of Pikmin 1’s main theme: ["small victory theme" plays] This can go back to the first stage music if you wait around long enough, but chances are you’ll soon activate the second stage of the battle, which smoothly transitions from any point to a harder, more percussive section, featuring a new melody in brass: ["stage 2 melody in brass" plays] That only plays once, then returns to the default loop. Now during this stage of the fight, you can chip away at the boss’s defenses, prompting one of three randomly chosen transitions: ["success transitions" play] And the boss can still shake Pikmin off. But when you finally break through the boss’s defenses and deplete all its health, the tempo finally slows with a last nod to Pikmin 1 as the boss falls: ["new boss defeated stinger" plays] All in all, quite a crazy new theme with unique adaptive bits to it, and it caps off a fantastic soundtrack to both the side story missions with charm all their own, and the Pikmin 3 boss soundtrack in general. Each of these climaxes comes with music that not only makes the battle engaging, but syncs with boss actions, highlights your progress, and just makes information clearer. The Pikmin series is rife with responsive music that accents gameplay this way, so I’m glad to see that trend continued and elaborated. This certainly won’t be my last video on the topic. But for now, I’d like to thank someone without whom this video would not be possible: Olimar12345. He provided amazing transcriptions of boss themes, and I’ve linked his channel in this video’s description. There he has a collection of thorough, high-quality recordings of tracks from the Pikmin series, where you can really hear the adaptive parts of the soundtrack laid bare. Please go show him some support, and kudos to him for the help with this video. And, I’d like to thank DavoGato, Nickolox, Sleepy, and OverlordDystroy for helping me with this script and helping organize the music clips I used. I’d also like to thank my patrons on Patreon, who help make my videos a more sustainable process. If you’d like to support my work directly and get perks like your credit here, a vote on what music I arrange, and more behind-the-scenes content, you can visit my Patreon link, also in this video’s description. But, really, just watching this video and sharing it around means a lot to me. So, I’m Scruffy, and thank you very much for watching.

Channel: Scruffy

Views: 1,240,241

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Id: GaBJ2C7Am6E

Length: 22min 14sec (1334 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 19 2020