Jason Charles Miller may have spent years being a big name in the rock and alternative scene, but recent years have seen him establish himself as the voice behind some of Final Fantasy 14's most powerful and emotional songs.
He's carried Warriors of Light through their first steps in Shadowbringers, their final moments in Endwalker with Close in the Distance, and most recently has soundtracked the battle against the Howling Blade in the latest raid series with Unleashed.
But for me, my personal favourite contribution of Miller's is undeniably To the Edge. It's the song that plays during the final boss battle of Shadowbringers' Patch 5.3—easily one of the most-revered patches in the entire game's history—capping off an emotional story with a legendary fight against the Warrior of Light.
I had the chance to sit down with Miller and talk about his career in music—not just for Final Fantasy 14, but other games like Metal Gear Rising: Revengence as well as his music outside of videogames—and his live performances of the MMO's tracks alongside composer Masayoshi Soken's band, The Primals.
When asked which track was his favourite to perform, Miller couldn't help but bounce from song to song before finally arriving at To the Edge. "Soken wrote a lot of that when he was in the hospital," he told me. "And so I think about that sometimes when I'm performing it, and then I look over at him and I'm so thankful that he's still here with us.
"So that's a fun thing to look over and see him, and knowing what was happening to him when he was writing it. How can that… you know, it's such an emotional and heartfelt time. But the song, you wouldn't know it playing the song, because it's so high energy."
As someone who's been fortunate enough to see Miller perform To the Edge live (and hell, even with my countless listens to the in-game version on Spotify) that emotion seeping through an epic boss theme is undeniably the thing that keeps me coming back to the song time and time again. It makes even more sense knowing the circumstances in which Soken wrote it—especially with the theme of the song being centered around death and the Final Days.
As for whether we'll be hearing Miller again in the future, he laughed: "You know I can't answer that!" I had to at least ask, eh?
