A Link Between Worlds has a phenomenal soundtrack. From the remixed tracks of A Link to the Past to the brand new themes introduced in areas such as dungeons, the soundtrack of the game certainly stands out. However, the music of the game is not played by a live orchestra. Why? Wouldn’t a full, live orchestral score of A Link Between Worlds be, well, out of this world?
In a recent interview with Official Nintendo Magazine UK, A Link Between Worlds composer Ryo Nagamatsu gave the reason as to why the game didn’t utilize a live orchestra — it wouldn’t have worked well with the 3DS speakers.
“By “orchestra”, I assume you mean live orchestra. We never intended to use a live orchestra for the development of this game. There are various reasons to this from a development perspective.
The most prominent reason is that we wanted to create optimal sound for Nintendo 3DS. Live orchestras are definitely impressive, but they produce too much reverberation and include too many low-pitch sounds to be suitable for the Nintendo 3DS speakers.
This time, our goal was to create sounds that satisfied both players who use headphones and those who don’t. We wanted, therefore, orchestra-quality sounds that had the appropriate reverberation and instrumental arrangement for the Nintendo 3DS speakers. We concluded that the best approach would be to use the high quality sound resources that are now available to us.”
