 The soundtrack to Nier was composed by a collaboration of the studio Monaca , consisting of Keiichi Okabe , Kakeru Ishihama , and Keigo Hoashi , along with Takafumi Nishimura from Cavia , the game 's developer . 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 separate from the development of the game . Often , elements of the game were modified to match the music , rather than the other way around . Some tracks were used in ways that the composers did not envision , such as " Grandma " , which was expected to be used in the prologue of the game but was instead chosen as a boss battle theme . 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 Taro Yoko 's main request was that he use a lot of vocal works . 
