Let’s take a moment not to reflect upon the agony of a concussion and how much it fucks up your plans (not to mention your face), and focus instead on the awesomeness of Lorne Balfe’s soundtrack for Assassin’s Creed III.

Understand that this is not a new game. It’s nine years old. And the soundtrack reflects that. There are strong elements of John Powell’s Jason Bourne scores and Philip Glass’s Illusionist soundtrack, both of which…I love.

It’s not just repetitive bass and heartbeat strings through. Check out the song that plays during a, well, fight club scene:

This is awesome. Once could wish it went on for three times as long. I’m the first to admit I’m an easy target for fiddles and hand drums, but even so, this is great. And a welcome reprieve from some of the game’s heavier themes, like this:

Even this, though, I love. And that troubles me. Because AC3 isn’t some indie title with an underground friend of a dev’s friend concocting a soundtrack. They build and hire to appeal to the largest number of people possible (though arguably slightly less so, now, with some of gaming’s more odious elements swearing off them due to Ubisoft’s by no means flawless willingness to portray women and minorities as creatures capable of more than being stepped on). The heartstrings these chords pull are easy to calculate and commodify, and people do. Often.

Remember the Trump video they put together to tout his “triumphant” return to the White House after he recovered from Covid? My insides curdled during that video, and not just for the ridiculous and damaging messaging. It was that soundtrack. Twitter quickly pounced on it as having been sourced from some sound house as ludicrous as “Music for Heroic Men” or something like that. But it could have come from any of the random orchestral playlists I listen to—from Cinematic Orchestra to Audiomachine. Generic “heroic” crap. And it’s crap I love.

I felt the same way when I ran the Marine Corps Marathon, where they played the Halo and Fallout 3 soundtracks as helicopters flew over to start the race. What the fuck, guys? Delusions of heroism concocted by these games—the romance of militarism—is how you got some of these kids to sign up and go get their heads (or bodies) fucked with, forever. Some of them died. Their friends are limping through this race with their images screen printed on their shirts. And you’re milking that same musical source to stoke the fires for the same shit at home? Enabling these fantasies to serve your own ends?

And I like that music! Less so now that I have a kid—I just want him to thrive; I don’t have the stomach for envisioning myself as someone heroic anymore—but certainly I used to crave music like that when running. To feel like a hero, or like anyone cared about the amount of effort I was putting in.

And that’s exactly what these songs do. As advertised. But I hate being so easily manipulated. Not that my musical tastes should be so edgy as to render me out of reach by cheap marketing tactics—I was never in the running for music hipsterdom—but just the fact that…I don’t know, that self-respect is such a Pavlovian response to a couple cellos and a drum kit. That’s kind of disgusting. No one should be that malleable.

It is, I guess, stupid and naive to resent the use of art to serve ends either business or military (which is itself a business). “But I liked it!” is probably one of the dumber reactions one can conjure up to this scenario. I’m not saying there are deep thoughts happening here. I have a concussion; I guarantee you these thoughts aren’t deep. Bitter, though, maybe. Burned. In a self-owning kind of way.