User:NegativeMP1/Music of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

The music of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (2013), developed by PlatinumGames and published by Konami, was composed primarily by Jamie Christopherson. Composed over a period of six months starting in November 2011, Christopherson worked with several other artists such as Logan Mader to create 13 heavy metal tracks for the game, all of which were implemented by Platinum to be adaptive and responsive to events in the game. Upon release of the game, its soundtrack was positively received for its composition and usage in the game. It has since been popular in meme culture, being attributed to Metal Gear Rising 's resurgence in popularity in 2022, and it has been subject to analysis for the themes portrayed by the lyrics in several of its tracks.

Background and composition
The soundtrack of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance was composed during a period of a six months by Jamie Christopherson. Christopherson had previously done work for several Japanese clients and composed music for games such as Lost Planet 2 (2010). Christopherson was first contacted by PlatinumGames when they hired Soundelux DMG for the game's sound effects and voiceover work. As they were hiring Soundelux, Platinum requested that Christopherson compose the game's soundtrack in November 2011, around midway through the game's development. This was Christopherson's first time composing an entire album's worth of music, and he described the amount of work and collaboration needed to create it to GameZone as "something completely different than I've experienced before in producing a soundtrack" and as "the most collaborative effort of any project that I've worked on".

Due to the scale of the project, Christopherson enlisted the help of other artists to sing and write the game's vocal tracks, such as Logan Mader, Graeme Cornies, Ferry Corsten, Jason Charles Miller, and remixers Maniac Agenda. Additionally, Christopherson was given some guidelines by Hideo Kojima on writing lyrics for the game's bosses, though most of his guidance was through Platinum. Unlike previous games in the Metal Gear series, which were stealth based and primarily used more cinematic music, Metal Gear Rising was being developed as a hack and slash, and thus the soundtrack was required to be more energetic. Per Platinum's request, the soundtrack was composed using heavy metal, though due to Christopherson's lack of experience in creating metal music, he required the assistance of other artists he had hired to mix their ideas together. The team also integrated different "types" of metal for the boss fights, citing "Rammstein metal" as the basis for the track Red Sun, and using primarily synthesizers for tracks such as The Stains of Time. A total of 13 tracks were composed for the game, and by the end of development, around 700 gigabytes worth of files were transferred back-and-forth between Christopherson and Naoto Tanaka, Platinum’s music director.

Implementation in-game
The soundtrack was implemented in-game to be adaptive, with lyrics being responsive to what was happening in-game. Platinum arranged Christopherson's work to "kick in at the height of the boss battles" and fit with the characters further, such as the track The Only Thing I Know For Real, the boss theme for Jetstream Sam, being arranged to "represent his inner thoughts being overtaken by concentration" in the words of NME. Another example of this is in the game's opening, where the track Rules of Nature plays as Raiden faces off against a Metal Gear Ray, and the lyrics are arranged to specifically play when Raiden parries the Metal Gear.

Album
The soundtrack was included as a part of the Limited Edition of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, which released on February 19, 2013. It also received a separate physical and digital release at an unknown time.

Reception and legacy
The soundtrack of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance received generally positive reception from critics. It has been praised for its ability to adapt to in-game actions by Scott McCrae of VG247, with the track Rules of Nature being considered a "perfect introduction" to the game. A staff review for AllMusic described the soundtrack as a "driving and hectic blend of electronica and hard rock" that helped "get players in the right headspace to play as katana-wielding cyborgs".

The connections between the soundtrack and specific characters, philosophies, and in-game events have also been praised. McCrae praised The Only Thing I Know For Real and It Has To Be This Way for their encapsulations of Jetstream Sam's struggle with loss of identity and Senator Armstrong's forced conflict with Raiden despite their similar philosophies respectively. They furthermore described that "each song perfectly encapsulates the character it represents". The views on The Only Thing I Know For Real were concurred by Heather Alexandra, a former writer for Kotaku, in their book titled Rules of Nature. Alexandria praised more tracks in the game, and furthermore described two specific ones, Collective Consciousness and The Hot Wind Blowing, to have similar themes based on American soldiers throughout history and usage of "blindly". Collective Consciousness was believed to focus more on the populous and The Hot Wind Blowing focusing on the relationship between them and the soldiers, with the later using what was described as a "buffalo image" to invoke similarities between the hunting and near extinction of buffalo and the historical image of "American carelessness".

The soundtrack has been used extensively in Internet meme, with earlier memes revolving around Rules of Nature before a drop in popularity. In 2022, the soundtrack was attributed to Metal Gear Rising 's resurgence in popularity, with the game having a 1000% increase in players on Steam in May of that year. Additional memes surrounding the soundtrack were created, such as those mixing Collective Consciousness with Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas Is You. The games style of adaptive music has been noted to be used in games such as Devil May Cry 5 (2019) and Hi-Fi Rush (2023).