Nobuo Uematsu, the legendary musician who composed the soundtracks for various Final Fantasy games, has finished composing the complete soundtracks for the series. Chatting with the German outlet Time (above VGC), Uematsu said he just didn't have what it took to put together the soundtrack for an entire game anymore.
“I don’t think I’ll compose music for an entire game again,” said Uematsu (machine translated from German). “You would have to go full throttle for two or three years. And I don’t think I have the physical and mental strength to do it anymore.”
Instead, Uematsu has decided to devote his time to less demanding work: “I think I would rather use the remaining time to work on other projects that I love,” such as the orchestral fantasy project “Symphonic Anime.” Merregnon or his band Nobuo Uematsu ConTIKI.
To be fair, it's been a while since Uematsu composed an entire Final Fantasy soundtrack himself. The last time he did this was in FF9, and the soundtrack of each subsequent game was composed by a mix of different musicians.
He has has since composed a full non-FF soundtrack: The score for the Apple Arcade game Fantasian, whose soundtrack included 60 complete pieces. But in statements surrounding this release, he hinted that health issues could lead to this being the final score of his life. That now sounds safer than ever.
That's a shame, because Uematsu's contribution to video game music is enormous and so significant that it took PCG some time to distill down his nine greatest musical moments. But keep your head up because that doesn't mean it's him total Completed. For example, he composed the main theme for Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Rebirth, and I would be shocked if Square Enix didn't ask him to step in again for the third part of the FF7 Remake trilogy.
