Soundtracks and Special Editions

Oh dear, it seems people with the expensive editions of Deus Ex are rather annoyed that the Augmented Edition version only has a handful of songs.

I'm a little dissapointed at how limited the Augemented Edition's soundtrack is. It's missing a ton of good tracks, almost all of the ambient music, most of the combat music, the only boss theme on it is the weakest one (Yelena's track is fantastic but Barret's is really weak), and doesn't have any of the character's liefmotifs on it, Icarus notwithstanding. The hell? - Link

Fuck this. My Aug Ed has half as many songs. =/

Worst special edition ever. - Link

"Well that's some fantastic gouging, advertising that the limited edition has the soundtrack when it's less than a third of the actual music, and then releasing a separate one..."

"I think it's more cause people liked the OST alot and there was enough demand to warrant an actual full OST. Don't think there were plans at first to release a seperate soundtrack." - Link

Bolded my me. Special Editions sometimes use OSTs as a hook to buy the game, but include only a handful of tracks - the buyer then watches as the full thing is released a little while after.

Me, I was schooled in the art of "never buying a special edition again" when I picked up the LE of Dragon Age. The main hook for me was the bundled OST - what I got for my money was a "free special plastic case" (hahaha etc), some poor DLC and a crippled soundtrack that only included 18 random tracks - any marginal value I got from paying extra was negated when the OST dropped containing 35 pieces of music, also here's an additional collection based around DLC.

I don't think an OST was included with the Mass Effect 2 special editions, but I steered clear just to be on the safe side - I didn't want a repeat performance of the above. Even disregarding the notion of low content OST bundles in Special Editions, look at how the music is broken up anyway: a main soundtrack is released, and then additional collections appear that could easily have been included (Combat and Atmospheric). Then we get more music appearing as the DLC packs for the game are released - Kasumi, Shadow Broker and Overlord (ah, DLC - you don't just break up games anymore, you do it to soundtracks too!)

Of course, you could argue the music for the DLC packs hadn't been put together at the same time as the main music but even so, you'll have to buy six different albums to get the complete Mass Effect 2 experience - and there's no reason why Combat and Atmospheric couldn't have been on the main album.

Interestingly, the Special Edition of Dragon Age 2 came with 29 tracks - however, trying to buy DA 2 music will mean you have to purchase this, this and this in order to get the full experience. It seems even when most (or all) of the music is included on a Special Edition, the soundtrack is then split up afterwards to ensure multiple purchases are required.

I don't know if Mass Effect 3 Special Editions come with a soundtrack, but I'd suggest you at least try to find out how many tracks are included before purchasing - and the same goes for all Special Editions touting an OST as a major selling point. Unfortunately, it's often impossible to obtain details of what makes up the Special Edition nitty gritty, which makes the problem of limited music tracks included in these collections much worse.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go and hug my six billion tracks per disc OSTs of Final Fantasy 7 to 10 while the words of this person ring in your ears like so much absent music...