Archive of Our Own ^beta

The only upbeat, energetic, even epic track on the list. This one is for Horus: its charge from Urbani, battle with Goliath, and ultimately its spontaneous realization and subsequent dramatic battle with itself and its directives (ending in heroic, if tragically ineffectual self-sacrifice) are pretty epic, I think. While the story is told in a gloomy, quiet scene within Primordia itself, since the events are long over and the game has turned particularly bleak by the time the player can learn about them, putting Horus in its actual position chronologically made the change in tone (and then the abrupt switch to the rest of the soundtrack) feel right to me.

Okay, yeah, using this song for juxtaposition with bleak and depressing imagery is probably cliche at this point. But it's got that sort of wistful old-school vibe and some ecological imagery that I think would slot in well alongside the canon song "Dreams of Green," and the specific "wonderful world" phrasing kinda makes it a sharp contrasting echo of Crispin and Horatio's "terrible world" scene, which is an interaction I find really powerful. So I had to give in and use it as the transition piece to Doomed Apocalyptic Hell World, cliche or no. :,)

As I scribble these out I realize I have a hard time verbalizing why I liked this one so much for the collection, aside from the fact that it's freaking eerie. I guess I'll say I put it in for Horus' ghost still echoing in Horatio's head in the form of various feelings he doesn't know the source of anymore, and the fact that he keeps repeating (thematically or otherwise) a fall he doesn't consciously remember anymore either - even involuntarily, in Scraper's attack.

This one made it in for a few reasons, but overall I think the gentler, plaintive tone fits the vibe of certain fleeting elements in the early game: the almost comfortable, homey feel of the inside of the ship once the generator is running, Crispin acting like a little boy making pew pew noises and spinning wild stories about random broken robots and space invaders, that kind of thing. The hopeful "it gets better" lyrics also feel like a nice early echo of the fact that things can actually get better someday, to varying degrees, if the player snags one of the Found Family endings.

The first outright dark, ominous track, with a slow-moving implacable vibe and regular references to the Devil; yeah, this one's for Scraper! But I think it also works for the recurring themes of war, weapons, general devastation, and members of various military forces in a very broad way, and given the chain of events set off by Scraper's attack and some of the subsequent characters met, I like that.

A theme for MetroMind, with calm and vaguely terrifying vocals and a constant thrumming undertone that kind of reminds me of both trains and power lines. My reasons admittedly don't go much deeper than that, but I REALLY like that creepy thrumming sound for her - and the refrain for her predatory and monstrously insane methods of desperately grasping at technically noble goals.

Sort of another Horatio theme, this time following the character threads of his stubborn self-reliance, being grumpy about personal property, "religious badass" undertones, anger problems, and the ominous potential for some of those wildly violent game endings in his future.

Quotably-sized portions of this song don't really do it justice (ha). A gloomy song about fallibility, suffering, and wrongdoing for sympathetic or unsympathetic reasons, or reasons one regrets or doesn't regret, with an eerie refrain about how the whole range of them will face judgement just the same. This one's for Clarity; the one line about "those suffering of soul / can find salvation" also feels like it could be a nice nod to her quietly softening over time and being freed not just from the Underworks, but potentially from Metropol entirely.

I included this one a little bit for Doomed Apocalyptic Hell World, a little bit for Horatio's loathing for and resentment of Metropol, and a little bit for "A perfect machine made up of a million imperfect parts. Us. ... Now, everything is misaligned and jammed and spinning out of control." And a little bit for how the combination of all those things can push our lead protagonist to some pretty dark, ugly places.

Combining the Book of Revelation with referring to Jesus only as "the man," and then bringing in the apocalyptic beasts and Horsemen, felt pretty at home in this story for me. Particularly somewhere in the late game, where the themes and reveals centered on humans and Humanism (and Horatio's insistent belief that Man will return, which I'm not sure is referenced directly in the first half but I could be forgetting) starting to drift more into the foreground. And then the ending cuts the music and we get, spoken in crackling silence: "and his name that sat on him was Death, and hell followed with him"...

...and then Thanatos appears. Not that I'm declaring this soundtrack is officially a Thanatos Ending timeline or anything, I consider it as multiple-choice as Primordia itself, but that plot token is pretty dark and I think it more than deserves its own track even if it's only an ominous possibility as Horatio quietly says "Well...it may still have some use" and starts walking to the tower - or stands on the roof contemplating his choices.

And now we mostly start winding it down. Depending on your ending of choice, I think this could work as well for the quiet walk in the desert sequence as it does for a plaintive fade-out after your preferred bad thing happens back in Metropol, with gentle callbacks to the train ride scene earlier in the story and a side of wistfulness and exhaustion.

Okay, I have to admit I was especially proud of this one. Not only would this be right at home with the dated style and mournful, melancholic pining of "Dreams of Green" if Horatio's record collection were any larger but still just as depressing, but it also drops lines about looking at the moon (sneaking in a reference to the spinoff story "Fallen") AND has a real-world connection to the Mars Opportunity Rover, an event involving a robot alone in an uninhabitable wasteland finally breaking down and making the audience cry. That's just peak Primordia aesthetic I think.

The title track, centerpiece, and the song that possessed me to assemble this album in the first place. Gloomy, heavy soul that I think recontextualizes wonderfully to the quirks and themes of Primordia and its setting.

A second instrumental piece to serve as bookends with "Witness to History," this time quiet and delicate and a little bit prettily sad. It also leaves us fading out with a piano suite that sneaks in one last reference to the moon, just as Primordia quietly keeps putting the moon in view throughout and leaves us with only one easily-missed entry in the kiosk to directly elbow us in the ribs about the bombshell that would later be dropped in "Fallen."