In addition, a limited edition was produced, which has a beige background instead of a full motion video montage. It features changes such as packaging design, translation, and additional images. The album was also released in North America under the title Final Fantasy VIII Music Collection: Music From The Final Fantasy VIII Video Game. Unlike most other Final Fantasy soundtracks, Final Fantasy VIII Original Soundtrack is composed completely of English track names. It was first published by DigiCube on Mawith the catalog number SSCX-10028, and subsequently published by Square Enix on with the catalog numbers SQEX-10005~8. The soundtrack spans four discs and 74 tracks, covering a duration of 4 hours and 9 minutes. Albums Final Fantasy VIII Original Soundtrack Final Fantasy VIII Original Soundtrackįinal Fantasy VIII Original Soundtrack is a soundtrack of the music from Final Fantasy VIII composed and produced by Nobuo Uematsu. After negotiations were made, "Eyes on Me" was recorded in Hong Kong with an orchestra. Uematsu claims "her voice and mood seem to match my image of the song exactly", and that her ethnicity "fits the international image of Final Fantasy". This resulted in the game's developers sharing "countless" artists, eventually deciding on Faye Wong, a Chinese vocalist. However, Nobuo Uematsu thought a ballad would closely relate to the theme and characters of Final Fantasy VIII. Near the end of the production of Final Fantasy VII, the developers suggested to use a singer, but abandoned the idea due to a lack of reasoning based on the game's theme and storyline.
The soundtrack features a Latin choral track "Liberi Fatali", which translates to "Fated Children" its melody forms a musical theme heard in several other pieces in the soundtrack, such as "SeeD" and "The Landing", while the name of "Fithos Lusec Wecos Vinosec" is the recurring lyrics in "Liberi Fatali". Uematsu considers it reasonable to have character themes if each character has a "highlight" in the game, but he found Final Fantasy VIII only focused on Squall Leonhart and Rinoa Heartilly as a couple, resulting in the "Eyes on Me" theme. The absence of character themes was due to him finding those of Final Fantasy VI and Final Fantasy VII ineffective. He asserts that expressing the emotions he desires is more important than improving skills: "I think it will be a shame if we won't be able to cry as we play our own game". Uematsu enjoys writing lyrical pieces, but tries not to be genre-specific. He could not express a character's emotions solely with plot, instead using images of appearance and attire-"It's important to know when their emotions are at their height, but it usually takes until a month before release for them to finish the ending dialog.!" In response to a question by IGN music stating that the music of Final Fantasy VIII was very dark and perhaps influenced by the plot of the game, Uematsu stated "the atmosphere of music varies depending on story line, of course, but it's also my intention to put various types of music into one game". Uematsu wrote notes based on character designs and screenplays, creating a general picture of the pieces' moods. In regard to Final Fantasy VIII, Uematsu did not prefer to use multiple sources to find MIDI instruments-"I could be coming up with a great melody in the very moment"-instead using a Roland SC-88 synthesizer for the entire score. Nobuo Uematsu's usual influences include Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Simon and Garfunkel, and Elton John.
The music of the video game Final Fantasy VIII was composed by regular series composer Nobuo Uematsu.