Not too long ago, I wrote a little piece about Echoes of War, a huge music release from the Eminence Symphony Orchestra. I just recently received “Echoes of War” in the mail.

It quite literally is the soundtrack for the entire universe of games Blizzard has released upon the world. If you are unfamiliar, Blizzard’s 3 major game IP’s are the Warcraft series, Diablo series, and Starcraft series.

Read on for the full breakdown.

At first I was a bit worried that I had payed too much on what for me was an impulse buy($62 counting shipping). I saw the videos, listened to the sample tracks, read the Kotaku article, and was convinced. I’m a sucker for extras, so I paid extra for the Legendary edition.

So you know, there are 2 editions of “Echoes of War”- the Standard edition and the Legendary Edition. One big difference is that the Legendary edition comes with some beautiful art from Diablo III, World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, and StarCraft 2. The other big difference is the Standard edition doesn’t come with the behind the scenes documentary DVD- but are the extras worth it? The extras in the Legendary edition are an extra $20.

As I stated before, I ordered the Legendary edition. It took about 2 weeks to arrive since it was being shipped from Japan. My unboxing of it looked something like this(thanks, Kotaku)-

The packaging, as expected, was of the highest quality and in my opinion Eminence succeeded in everything they tried to accomplish. Even the packaging seemed very much like something Blizzard would do. Nothing was out of order or damaged.

Not being very patient, I dove right into the reason I ordered it: the music. They faced a particular challenge: adapting the music from Blizzard’s games to standalone music pieces. Hiroaki Yura, the director of Eminence, makes the point that music in a game is really meant to evoke certain emotions brought on by the visuals, and changing them to be standalone music pieces is not an easy thing. I’m not going to transcribe the whole “making of” featurette, but I will say that the music was FANTASTIC. Yes, caps was needed for that. The composition, the melody, the quality, everything.

The attention to detail and just general quality of the whole thing has made me a big fan of Eminence. If you are unaware, they are composing the music for Diablo III. I don’t think anything like this has ever come out, nor will for some time. The amount of people involved is staggering. They had great guest composers/arrangers for this production, like Kow Otani, who is basically the John Williams of Japan.

Their aim with this was definitely a labor of fan love, and it shows. The other thing that shines through is their close relationship with Blizzard- they had influence over a lot of Echoes of War, anything from the packaging to the artwork. Russell Brower, the Director of Audio at Blizzard, had quite a hand in the production of Echoes of War. The extent of his involvement is quite clear in the “making-of” DVD in the Legendary Edition.

The making-of DVD is what really makes the Legendary Edition totally worth buying. It contains a main documentary, and 2 bonus videos worth a watch. The main documentary focuses on the challenges of this undertaking, the team involved, and ultimately the journey of “Echoes of War” from idea to reality. It’s a solid and well done documentary, around an hour long.

The 2nd video on the disc is a featurette on Kow Otani, who is taking on the task of Diablo III music. It’s interesting to hear of his respect for games as a storytelling medium, and his approach to how his music fits into and enhances that medium.

The 3rd video is simply a long slideshow of pictures from the production of Echoes of War- not as compelling as the other DVD content, but still a good watch.

Overall, I would have to rate my satisfaction with my purchase as quite high. I’ve listened to the music of Echoes of War at least 5 times now, and I love it. Games and film are what really got me into listening to classical music, and I love it when classical music and gaming collide- we get fantastic things like this.

Eminence hopes one day to take this music on the road- I hope it comes near me, because I will definitely be buying a ticket. You can view their website here.

In case you missed it, the official site for Epic Games’ recent release, Gears of War 2, has some exciting news. For one, the soundtrack is now for sale via the guys at Sumthing Else, or in normal CD format on shelves everywhere. I’m not quite sure whether or not to get it, but knowing my weakness for game music I’ll probably cave pretty soon.

The merchandise section is brimming with plenty of, well, merchandise for any of you who wish to fully express your love of GoW, though I think a Gears shoe is taking it a bit far.

If you’ve neglected to browse the photos section of the Gears 2 official website, you may have been missing out. It certainly has some nice features to be sure. You can browse everyones pictures, or just your own. There is also a nice handy dandy tab for just viewing the cool pictures you and your friends have uploaded- quite nice.

The MLG Gears of War 2 Film Festival is still on- record and upload your frag videos!

Epic also recently released a matchmaking fix update, something many Gears players like myself are definitely ecstatic about. Rod Fergusson’s post I just linked to is a definite must-read if you experience any more problems.

Some interesting stats for your pleasure(not least of which GoW2 is #1 on XBL right now):
* Almost 3 million multiplayer matches (excluding Private) have been played.
* Almost 1 million screenshot photos have been uploaded to gearsofwar.com
* The most popular multiplayer mode is Horde.
* The most popular multiplayer map across all modes is River.
* The most lethal weapon is the Gnasher shotgun with almost 29% of all kills.