This article discusses Nobuo Uematsu’s leitmotivic soundtracks to the 16-bit Final Fantasy role-playing games. I identify five distinct techniques within these soundtracks whereby a game’s main theme is musically connected to a single character theme: eponymous omission, motivic networking, thematic hybridization, associative troping, and the double main theme. I argue that these different techniques demonstrate how a character’s individual journey reflects the story’s underlying literary theme, which is itself represented by the musical main theme. I conduct topical, motivic, formal, and semiotic analyses of the soundtracks to FFIV–VI and discuss how their character themes, though mostly non-transformative, engage in a larger leitmotivic network of inter-related thematic families that interact with their main themes in dramatically meaningful ways. This analysis demonstrates subtle ways in which leitmotivic scoring can heighten one’s narratological understanding of a story, and may be useful for those seeking to arrange video game soundtracks into programmatic music that tells or retells a game’s story.

中文翻译：

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植松伸夫最终幻想原声带的主题策略

本文讨论植松伸夫为 16 位最终幻想角色扮演游戏创作的主旋律配乐。我在这些配乐中确定了五种不同的技术，通过这些技术，游戏的主题在音乐上与单个角色主题相关：同名省略、动机网络、主题混合、联想转义和双重主题。我认为这些不同的技巧展示了角色的个人旅程如何反映故事的潜在文学主题，而该主题本身又由音乐主题代表。我对 FFIV-VI 的配乐进行主题、动机、形式和符号学分析，并讨论他们的角色主题（尽管大多是非变革性的）如何 参与一个更大的由相互关联的主题家族组成的主旨网络，这些主题家族以极其有意义的方式与其主题互动。该分析展示了主旨评分可以提高人们对故事的叙事理解的微妙方式，并且对于那些寻求将视频游戏配乐编入讲述或重述游戏故事的程序化音乐的人来说可能很有用。