Pretty sexy, though.

Spread your frequencies out a little bit more and remaster and level out the volumes for each instrument. The guitar is drowning out your orchestra. Other than that, It's a wonderful piece. Keep it up.

I'll admit that it is similar to the transformers theme, but I don't see the similarity with Skyrim. Not the same chord progression, melody, or even arrangement style (Skryim's theme is a male choir).

The thing is, it's all been done. It's nearly impossible to write a piece that doesn't resemble another piece in some way.

http://youtu.be/oOlDewpCfZQ

It's true that a lot has been done. I mean most ideas are increments of previous ideas but I'm still constantly being surprised by new ideas so I don't think it's 'all' been done. I mean thank god Edison didn't think that, or the Wright Brothers.

Sometimes I think "It's all been done before" is more of an excuse for people not to try.

"its all been done," is not an excuse. I guess the best way to explain it to a non-musician is: imagine you are drawing a 16x16 tile of grass. Your tile is bound to look similar another tile of grass, drawn by somebody else. The only way to be sure to make something that doesn't resemble another tile of grass is to increase the number of pixels you are working with (or change the pallet).

The problem is, in music this means using things like key changes and odd time signatures, which don't fit well into the context of a video game where most of the listeners do not have developed ears, at all. It's kind of like trying to be a gourmet cook for a 2 year old.

I do believe most of the reason this piece sounds similar to others to you guys is because it's an orchestration. If you only have listened to hand-full of orchestrations, which I'm inclined to believe because you guys are citing examples from mainstream movies and video games that really aren't that similar. For instance, people who don't listen to rap tend to think all rap sounds the same. People who don't listen to classical tend to think all classical sounds the same. You get the idea.

It is a cliche melody. Most movie and game themes do have very cliche sounding melodies. Grass is a cliche thing to draw. Many video games have grass.

Here is the piece arranged only on guitars.
http://soundcloud.com/christopherlaponsie/epic-refrain

I think that the version without guitars does sound a lot more like the theme that you would use in a game. The normal version with guitar sounds like it would be used for something else, like an Action tv show theme or something.

I actually really like it without guitars. Oddly enough, though, I think I'd like it even better without the background effect that's at around 0:12 to 0:45. That effect sounds too... Star trek to me. I'm not even a star trek fan, I've just heard the little opening dialogue a couple times and it kind of reminds me of that.

It's not a similarity issue, though; I just think the song would sound better without it or with something else because I really like it after that part passes.

I'm still trying to figure out how any of that arrangement sounds anything like Skyrim, or any mainstream gaming or movie title for that matter.

As for the absence of the guitar, it fits much better with a game. It gives all of the instruments a lot more room to spread out and make it feel epic. When you have a solo instrument as your header (especially if you reduce the stereo and width of the sound) it always tries bringing the music back to a center point. If you're doing an animation with a main character, that would be alright, but when doing a score for an undefined hero in a game world, that's a different story. It will also end up making the track very claustrophobic and honestly a little amateur. Just keep that in mind.