I tweaked out so hard when the new chapter came out for Monument Valley 3 in April. I LOVE THE NOMAD AND NOOR'S DYNAMIC!!!
Now. Don't mind my little rant, but after playing MV3, I wanted to replay the first Monument Valley game just to get that feeling of love I had for it again. However, I noticed something interesting about the first game: it had little to no music. It felt barren and empty, unlike its 2nd and 3rd games. Of course, there's probably a more realistic and logical reason as to why that is, maybe they didn't have many people working on it, maybe the budget was small. However, I like to think there's a reason why the first Monument Valley game feels so much more dead than the other games. If we were to think about the timeline of Monument Valley 1, we know that the main protagonist, Iida, took geometry from the "humans", which implied their extinction. Throughout the entire playthrough, music was in the form of ambience; it didn't really have a life or purpose to it. In the second and third games, music plays a significant role in the world-building. It brings life to the world that the game has built and reveals the humans' thoughts and feelings. Music provides insight into their passion and values, highlighting what makes them human and why sacred geometry is important to them.
When the humans died, so did their music. Iida took the geometry, and in turn took their livelihood and passion. Leaving nothing but ambience to a world that was once FILLED with music. It is a constant reminder of what she had done. Even if she were to have been forgiven...It was only ONCE she gave back all of the geometry that she found that music again. And even then, it doesn't compare to how beautiful and cultured the 2nd and 3rd game's soundtracks are. Because she isn't human, she cannot replicate that passion they had for geometry; it was their purpose, and their duty. And she stole that from them. She stole their music, in turn losing her own music, her own purpose.
