“Ancient Stones” is more hopeful, working in some lovely reverberating acoustic guitar or mandolin, while “The Jerrall Mountains” will come as a surprise as an arrangement of “Silt Sunrise” from the Morrowind soundtrack. The piece you heard in our unboxing video, “Far Horizons,” is a general exploration theme, and is another favorite with its defiant brass melody calling out over the mountains. The biggest addition is the inclusion of some choral work which varies from powerful and almost intimidating in the main theme, “Dragonborn,” to angelic and serene in tracks like “Frostfall” and one of my favorite tracks on the album, “Kyne’s Peace.” The latter accompanies adventurers as they explore a forest at night, and the beautiful theme couldn’t be more appropriate. While the Soule brothers have always been known for their technical magic, they’ve raised the bar even further with Skyrim, recreating realistic strings, brass, percussion, and guitar that all sound so vibrant and warm. In terms of sound quality, with such a huge game franchise you’d expect a budget for live orchestra. I know I’m beating a dead horse at this point, but this soundtrack is bigger and badder than anything Jeremy Soule has done before. There are separate themes for castles, towns, dungeons, caves, and taverns. Or maybe you’re doing some night time exploration the music is different and appropriate to that setting as well. Yes, there are exploration and combat themes, but now there are different musical backdrops depending on whether you’re out exploring the wilderness versus a forest or the tundra. Heck, the soundtrack alone is four discs in length, and it doesn’t even contain all of the music that was written for the game. That is completely rectified with Skyrim. Especially when it came to the heavily stylized expansion settings, the simple breakdown into exploration and combat themes for Morrowind and the addition of town themes for Oblivion simply didn’t provide enough variety for the massive landscapes fans were exploring. One of the biggest complaints from fans, myself included, regarding the soundtracks for Morrowind and Oblivion were that, while they were amazing, they were too small for such massive games. The Soule brothers gained a lot of attention with their scores for Morrowind and Oblivion, so how does Skyrim stack up? That comparison is hardly even fair, but I won’t spoil too much before the jump. Jeremy Soule’s Skyrim soundtrack has easily been one of my most anticipated soundtracks of the year after seeing and hearing it in action at E3, and while I admit that I’ve been a naughty boy and have yet to play the game (I was trying to jam through Skyward Sword and have just wrapped up Dark Souls), I’ve been enjoying the hell out of the soundtrack.

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