Another Final Fantasy 14 expansion means another belting collection of tracks to listen to on repeat both in and out of the popular MMORPG. For Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail, the game’s fifth major expansion, a few songs have stood out from the crowd and comfortably made their way into players’ daily lives. These include ‘Smile’, the gospel-inspired end credits theme, and the infectious ‘Bee My Honey’ from The Arcadion raid series’ second boss fight.
But for me, it’s ‘Give It All’ that stands head and shoulders above the rest. This thumping ballad closes out the first tier of The Arcadion raid series, in no small part thanks to Chrissy Costanza - vocalist of the New York-hailing Against the Current - who lent her voice to the track.
Recently, I was able to chat with Costanza about her role in the song, her history with gaming, what it was like getting to work with Final Fantasy 14’s revered composer Masayoshi Soken, and more.
Preparing to fight
“It was so cool, they were awesome!” says Costanza of getting to work with Soken and the sound team at Square Enix’s Creative Studio 3. “Getting to work with a company, specifically a person you’ve heard about as if they’re some legend, and then all of a sudden they’re in front of you and you’re collaborating together. It was a very surreal experience, I feel really lucky and honored to have been chosen for it.”
The track ‘Give It All’ isn’t Costanza’s first video game project. She - alongside rock band Against the Current - has partnered with Riot Games multiple times to provide songs for the League of Legends World Championships over the years, including ‘Legends Never Die’, ‘Phoenix’, and ‘Wildfire’. Elsewhere, Costanza has performed songs for shonen anime My Hero Academia, so collaborating with people and companies outside of the music industry is fairly old hat for the singer.
“I’ve been a gamer my whole life,” Costanza explains. “In the last five or six years or so I’ve made my way into being a voice in the gaming space, especially when it comes to these more epic tracks. When [Square Enix] mentioned they had this new raid series coming up and there was a song I’d be a good fit for, I was so pumped!”
Lightning will strike, thunder will fall
‘Give It All’ is the theme of Wicked Thunder, the final boss of The Arcadion’s first (and at the time of writing, the most recent) raid tier. Wicked Thunder is the alias of a character known as ‘Eutrope’, who was presumed missing during the story’s events. Later, it’s revealed that Eutrope fled The Arcadion after discovering a diabolical secret about the entertainment enterprise. Her song, in turn, portrays themes of desperation, addiction, and putting everything on the line in order to survive. And like the boss's namesake, the track is simply electrifying.
“The thing that I really loved about this is that there’s a lot of context about her story, what her motivations might be, what she would be feeling. It’s really a song that’s through her lens. To the player, she’s the villain. But in her mind, she’s not, right? This is her comeback moment.” says Costanza of Eutrope.
“It was fun getting to ‘act’ in this track, really putting yourself in the shoes of this person and what her perspective may be during the battle. Usually, you can sing through a track front to back and have it sound good, but it was nice going through this and thinking: ‘Through each of these moments, what would her thoughts be, what would her emotions be like?’
“She’s gonna be riled up sometimes, other times it’ll be more nuanced and subtle, maybe then soft and introspective. It was an exciting project because with Against the Current, I’m just me. I don’t have to think about what someone else might be feeling necessarily. But in this case, it was ‘what is this character feeling?’”
Bringing out the big guns
I’m always a huge fan of seeing established vocalists lend their voices to video game soundtracks. Costanza is far from the first, even for Final Fantasy 14. Sam Carter, the vocalist of Brighton-based metalcore group Architects, sang the lead vocals alongside Amanda Achen for the Endwalker expansion’s main theme, ‘Footfalls.’
Elsewhere, the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise has been doing this for years, collaborating with singers including Zebrahead’s Ali Tabatabaee, Bowling for Soup’s Jaret Reddick, and - most recently - Sleeping with Sirens’ Kellin Quinn on Sonic Frontiers. I asked Costanza about video games collaborating with notable singers, and if it’s something she expects to see more of in the future.
“Oh, totally! I’m really passionate about both music and gaming, so seeing the two come together is a dream,” she says. “It’s always a really cool moment for fans of the game and fans of the artist when they see those two things come together. I think it’s cool, as well, when you don’t know one or the other and you’re introduced to them through that.
“I love that music and gaming aren’t being isolated into a corner now. People are now being like: ‘This isn’t just game music, it’s music music.’”
Costanza’s desire to work in the gaming space doesn’t seem to be going anywhere after working on ‘Give It All.’ As well as working on a project for a Dungeons & Dragons setting book, she says that she’d love to be part of “a full soundtrack of a game,” adding that another dream of hers is to provide a full voiceover of a character and their theme song.
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