Reacting To Video Game Music! | FFXIV – Civilizations / La Hee (The Rak'tika Greatwood)



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48 thoughts on “Reacting To Video Game Music! | FFXIV – Civilizations / La Hee (The Rak'tika Greatwood)”

  1. Civilization is iconic as it yet again represents why FFXIV's OST is great : the variety of its pieces.
    You have stuff like Civilization, you have epic boss battle themes, rock, hip hop, metal, jpop, and all thematically fitting for the encounter.

    La-hee is great because it also shows the interest from the dev theme for the community.
    After the song was released, it became a meme in the community, and they decided to embrace it.
    The lyrics are some kind of pre-recorded sample from a library, without meaning, but they added in the official lore in a later patch that "La-hee" means "Good morning" in a fictional language spoken where this song is played, and then suddenly at a fanfest, in the middle of a serious concert, you have this performance from Soken (aka the sound director and main composer of FFXIV).

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  2. So Soken singing LaHee is from fanfest which was live streamed over the course of 2-3 days, at the end of which he told us, and his coworkers, that he had been hospitalized with cancer for months during the pandemic and continued to work without telling anyone

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  3. it was something to watch this live. because they just go from serious live renditions of various songs and then LA HEE happens. gotta love Soken and the team for keeping up with the community's memes.

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  4. You're correct, this is the daytime zone music for the Rak'tika greatwood zone (you get a different song at night time). That's why it feels different from most of the other music that you've heard from FFXIV as it will play on a loop all the time you are in the zone. Every zone and city has it's own music and in most cases different music for day and night. A lot of it is fairly unmemorable, but some really stand out and this is one. Yanxia and Old Sharlayan stand out for me.

    There is a lot of music in the game, every zone (and there are dozens), city, dungeon, boss and raid has it's own music, sometimes multiple tracks and you've only listened to a small amount.

    I'm sure this has been mentioned, but if you can you should play the game. The songs you have listened to are great, but you are missing all the context for them, which greatly increases their impact. It is a large time investemnt (hundreds of hours now) but well worth it.

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  5. The funny part about the song is that you'll enter the Greatwood with this nice poetic speech about the land and the people who live there, then as soon as the cutscene ends "LA HEE". It happens immediately after several serious cutscenes, and it just makes me snort everytime.

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  6. This might get lost in the sea of requests, but my biggest recommendation for an overworld theme from FFXIV would be the Azys Lla Theme ( Order Yet Undeciphered ). It's from a floating complex of advanced technology that's been lost to time, and I feel like the music is really good at reflecting this.

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  7. For actual context.

    This was during FF14 fanfest '21 – which was a digital event due to covid – Soken (and honestly the staff/dev team in general) are known for their fun nature with the stuff they do at fanfest (cosplays, The director sings with the band sometimes too, etc) – this is just one of those things and it's why we love them.

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  8. Civilizations is the daytime music of the area The Rak'tika Greatwood.
    So whenever the ingame time switches from night to day, the first thing you heard is "LA HEE"
    The community loved it and it became a meme.
    It went even so far that the storywriter changed the meaning of "La hee" from originaly just being the sound of the forest to being the morning greetings of a ancient culture.
    So La Hee is just "Good morning"

    And the Soken performence.
    He knew that he will be asked short notice to do something crazy, but he didnt knew what.
    A few hours before the performence he got told to do "La Hee" with the otomatone. He had no real time to prepare.

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  9. He also did this 2 years earlier in the previous expansion for Yanxia / Wayward Daughter, both for fanfests

    There is another world music type in XIV, which is the Azim Steppe theme (mongolian inspired area), which can send similar but different vibes. Civilizations is indeed mysterious because it's an area that's all about mysteries and ancient, forgotten civilizations (with those mayan like pyramids at the bottom of this dark forest, with actual indiana jones shenanigans)

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  10. Soken gave "Yanxia" the same treatment a few years ago…. It was the first part of the Tsukiyomi music you just reacted to, so you'll get the reference if you look it up!

    Soken is a treasure.

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  11. This was during fanfest 2021 about a good year ago and it was online because of Covid so for a lot of us (including me) this was our very first fanfest. While watching the concert he would just randomly appear and do his thing as our memelord and savior and then he became the absolute legend for this. You better believe all the channels that were watching the performance (Youtube, Twitch, Niconico) were all "??????" and "YOOOOO" at the same time xD He does know the name of the OST since he wrote it but we all know it better by "LaHee". It got memed so much that they added a quests they explained that "LaHee" means "wake up".

    Also, what made him even more of a legend was… since we (and by we i mean the players and 99,99% of the development team since only the CEO and YoshiP (director) knew about what was happening and were told not to tell anyone to keep the normalcy) found out during fanfest a bit later that he was battling cancer, the first thing he did when they let him out of the hospital was this.
    The performance was so good in its chaotic way that I'm serious about spending money if they make an orchestrion version in the game.

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  12. This is the same fanfest where Soken announced he was recovering from cancer. He's wearing a wig because his hair fell out because of the chemo. This man was faced with his own mortality and decided that he wanted to do this when he recovered. Dual-wielding otamatones singing off-key to prank the entire playerbase. You saying "Soken is a real one" is an understatement here.

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  13. This is one of those song where u just go to the zone just to listen to the music couse its so relaxing.
    As for Soken's performance, well, it should explain why most ppl know the song as La Hee eh? such a fun way to do it 🙂

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  14. The "loop" is weird, but it is pretty much how it works in game. Some of the field themes have a beginning and end, so they don't have an actual loop. Also during the live letters where they play background music, they will not play Civilizations because chat spammed LA HEE the last time they used it.

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  15. To add a bit more context to the La Hee meme prior to Soken doing this, it just became a common thing people shout in chat when they enter that area (because of the song) specially in larger events like hunt trains (something organized regularly by the community which gathers a lot of people).

    There’s also a sidequest which makes you go around and shout La Hee for some reason.

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  16. La Hee became a meme with the community, because the story is very lore heavy and has some really intense moments, but whenever you exit out of a cutscene the background music goes "LA HEE!" and rips you right out of the moment 🤣
    Also, imagine farming there for a few hours and hearing this piece over and over again with the strange pause in between, because it isn't a seamless loop.

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  17. Soken is a musical genius, and everyone knows that. What people didn't know, before the 2021 fanfest, is that he's actually god-awful at singing XD He'd tried to get his singing, in one way or another, into the game/associated media many times, but his best friend and game director Yoshi-P had always very clearly said no. This was his "congratulations" for surviving and thriving in the face of his cancer.

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  18. Everyone knows Soken is a Big Fan of Otamatone's on Fanfest he often Plays with them. It became a running Gag. Have one signed by Soken from 2019's Fanfest in Paris.

    Also as for some Clearification. He perform "La-Hee" on the second Day of Fanfest 2021 and indtantly became a Meme. At the third Day at the Ending Panel he announced his Cancer Diagnosis in front of all the Staff Members and of course in the Livestream. And aside of Yoshi-P and the Square CEO nobody was aware of it and he still wrote Songs like To the Edge while laying in a Hospital Bed.

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  19. It’s tradition to just type LA HEE in shout chat when you’re in that area, the FFXIV community is just like that and I‘m so happy Soken is representing us with his performance

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  20. I am grateful when composers or bands do this.
    It is liberating for me, because if they don't feel ridicule butchering their own songs, I don't feel that way either.
    I don't know how to explain it.

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  21. That's not an edit, it's actually just the way the song loops in game. Its probably the worst looped song in the entire game, but it works well because of how it starts.
    Also, the language is completely made up. Just things that sound good together.
    Soken is a legend, battling cancer in solitude during covid in 2020 and still produced his best track to date (imo) To the Edge.

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