ReMix:Dark Souls III "The Profaned Vanguard" 6:55

Our FIRST EVAR ReMix of Dark Souls 3 comes from - make sure you're sitting down ;) - RoeTaKa (Alex Roe), who further extends his musical clutches into the innards of the DS/BB universe with this dark, initially-intimate but conclusively-epic symphonic/cinematic arrangement of "Yhorm the Giant" and "Epilogue", a collab with arranger Lindsay Orsini:

"This will be my first collaboration on here if this gets posted. I am not much of a collaborator, but I was approached by Lindsay about working together, and I thought "Hell, why not, see what happens!" We talked a lot about what kind of song we'd like to do and how we could work to each other's strengths. Quite quickly, we decided that we'd really like to do a waltz, and I just so happened to be thinking about doing a remix of "Yhorm" at the time and it felt like a natural fit.

We came up with some ideas for how we'd like the arrangement to sound and soon started to think about the lore for Yhorm. His is a tragic tale, one where he loses his beloved, he ruled a kingdom that doubted him, and, in his duty, he accidentally killed his people. Lindsay came up with the idea to use "Epilogue" to reflect the sadder side of this arrangement. I think we worked well together, we helped make each other's work stronger. As for what we did, without getting into specifics, I think it's pretty fair to say Lindsay had a majority of the creative control with the first half, and I did for the second half. I think we will work together again in the future on something. I'm not sure what, but I look forward to it!"

From a collab perspective, everything flows, and while the first half is definitely more subdued, it leads very naturally into the soaring, epic heights of the conclusion. Piano is key, as are ensemble and solo choral components, with multiple string & brass articulations rounding out the instrumentation. Gario writes:

"Sheesh, RoetaKa is on a roll with these Dark Souls arrangements. The only thing I could possibly have some issue with is the similar style to the source that the track has, but the blending of the sources and changes to the levels of energy throughout qualify this as interpretive enough, in my eye. The production is top tier, and the overall track is gorgeous. Amazing work once again."

Ditto that; this fits perfectly into Roe's arsenal of dark, Gothic arrangements of the series, so it seems like the collaborative process was relatively seamless, and might even have imbued the end result with a bit more structural/narrative contrast. At almost seven minutes long, this is a complete, substantive arrangement which tells a story convincingly & with maximum dramatic impact!