Whatever you think about how Anthem turned out as a game, the soundtrack by Sarah Schachner is legitimately world-class. She brought her Assassin's Creed Origins chops to BioWare's ambitious sci-fi universe and delivered something massive.
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"Legion of Dawn" opens with thundering brass and choir that screams epic fantasy filtered through Iron Man suits, "First Flight" captures the genuine thrill of launching a Javelin for the first time, and "The Anthem of Creation" goes full mythological with layered orchestration that sells the cosmic scale of the Anthem itself.
The character and location pieces are where Schachner really shines. "Tarsis Nights" is moody and intimate, the sound of a city holding its breath, while "Haluk's Wisdom" gives the grizzled veteran a theme with real weight and weariness.
"The Monitor" is a proper villain theme, menacing and controlled, and "The Fall of Freemark" turns the backstory tragedy into something genuinely affecting with mournful strings and building percussion. "Into the Heart of Rage" is the climactic showpiece, pulling together motifs from across the album into a massive final-mission suite.
"Reflections" closes everything out with quiet grace. Twenty-three tracks of orchestral sci-fi scoring that deserved a better game around it. Schachner composed a soundtrack for the Anthem that BioWare imagined, not the one they shipped.