 The soundtrack to Nier was composed by a collaboration of the studio <unk> , directed by Keiichi Okabe and including Kakeru Ishihama and Keigo Hoashi , and Takafumi Nishimura from Cavia . Okabe served as the lead composer and as the director for the project as a whole . Okabe was brought onto the project when the concept for the game was first being devised , and worked intermittently on the soundtrack for the next three years until its release . The music for the game was generally composed entirely separately from the development of the game . The music was designed for different motifs to appear in various arrangements throughout the soundtrack , and also to convey a sense of sadness even during the " thrilling " tracks . Okabe was allowed a great deal of freedom regarding what the music was to sound like ; game director Yoko Taro 's main request was that he use a lot of vocal works . 
