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Ori & the Will of the Wisps: Moon Studios aims to 'perfect Metroidvania genre' - Preview & Interview
- Thread starter Pepin
- Start date
Sounds amazing. I'm especially excited to play this in 4K HDR. The colors of the art should be even more vibrant with that. I hope the story has emotional touches again.
Also a bit excited for that ... Other ... Project you teased a few months ago.
I'm playing through hollow knight right now and we'll I actually think the original Ori is still the better game there are lots of things that I think hollow knight learned from and improved from Ori.
I think the thing that stands out to me with Hollow Knight is how enjoyable and challenging the boss fights are, Ori had nothing like that and I'm hoping they can adopt some of that stuff.
I think the thing that stands out to me with Hollow Knight is how enjoyable and challenging the boss fights are, Ori had nothing like that and I'm hoping they can adopt some of that stuff.
Assuming boss fights is inclusive of optional bosses as well, which i suspect the poster was, there are benches placed this far behind. Crystal Peak is an example.. Many posters have shared this same sentiment. Regardless of the semantics , the subject of the criticism around this issue is the perception. Whether it's 2 mins or 10 mins, doesn't negate the feeling of frustration spending more time than the player was comfortable spending getting to the spot they died in.
More than any one dev can , in theory, perfect the genre and do so in their own image with their own design choices and still exist in a world where another dev does so too.
Thanks for coming to this thread :) I can't wait to play Will of the Wisps when it comes out and Blind forest definitely has a special place in my heart as a diehard xbox fan. I wish you and everyone else on the team best of luck in both Will of the Wisps and the unannounced project :)
Ori is my favorite side scroller since Super Metroid. Brilliant game design. I wasn't as captivated by the story as some of you but I'll be there first day for the gameplay.
Indeed, and we saw this earlier this year:
I can't wait to see what else they're cooking.
I really need to go play the first Ori. I own it but haven't played it yet. Hollow Knight is currently my GOTY.
While the first Ori is a solid game, I personally thought it was terrible as a Metroidvania. When a developer thinks that streamlining progress to avoid backtracking is what's needed, it goes entirely against what I what as a huge fan of these games. Exploration is number one for me, and Hollow Knight is the new Gold standard, with new and expansive extra areas around every corner. I'm obviously the outlier here but that's my two cents.
Why is Hollow Knight better? I played through Ori and enjoyed it more than Hollow Knight thus far, but I'm not too far in Hollow Knight.
The hyperbole surrounding HK has been way too much on resetera. I mean I love the game ( currently playing through it right now) and its a really good game but some folks need to chill with masterpiece talks. It does a lot of things well and I am happy Ori 2 is taking some notes from it :)
I feel like enemies take one zillion hits to die in HK and that's with most of the upgrades. It makes backtracking very tedious.
Very excited for the game.
However, I hope Moon Studio doesn't lose sight on what makes the first game that extra special by focusing too much on replayability.
Ori and the Blind Forest is the only game in the genre that has a amazing story. Sure, that made the game a bit shorter than its counterparts but I could still vividly remember the plot after finishing the game. That's really rare in metroidvania. I hope I could experience that again. Please don't be a Hollow Knight clone, which will be disappointingly hollow.
However, I hope Moon Studio doesn't lose sight on what makes the first game that extra special by focusing too much on replayability.
Ori and the Blind Forest is the only game in the genre that has a amazing story. Sure, that made the game a bit shorter than its counterparts but I could still vividly remember the plot after finishing the game. That's really rare in metroidvania. I hope I could experience that again. Please don't be a Hollow Knight clone, which will be disappointingly hollow.
If you are backtracking why are you even wasting time on killing the enemies if you can just go past them? Sounds like the same thing I sometimes see in Souls threads of people complaining about enemies respawning when you have to retry the bosses, like you are obligated to kill them all over again instead of just running past them.
Also enemies do no take "one zillion hits" to die with a upgraded nail. You also have charged attacks which lets you one-shot quite a few of them.
Team Cherry has said they have had talks with both Sony and Microsoft but that's all we know.
Best of luck to you and your team Thomas! I personally can't wait for WotW. Blind Forest is a masterpiece, and it remains my Game of the Generation.
I love love love Ori. Hollow Knight put down a hell of a gauntlet , Moon Studios. I hope you guys deliver.
On another note. Ori can be its own game and be great so we shouldnt say that it has to beat Hollow Kniight or else its trash. That would be unfair.
On another note. Ori can be its own game and be great so we shouldnt say that it has to beat Hollow Kniight or else its trash. That would be unfair.
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My first thought as well. I liked the first Ori quite a bit but Hollow Knight took the genre to another level. It really was super metroid meets dark souls. Hollow knight nails the feeling of isolation and a foreboding tension unlike anything I've played since dark souls. Truly an immersive experience.
That said I'm not counting out the new Ori. Looks fantastic.
Masterpiece talk aside, it's good that people are using it as a reference. Ori has superior visuals and the platforming was already great (maybe a question of preference which of the two wins out), but HK moved ahead with the combat, background lore and sheer content. I'm pretty sure that they're going to focus a lot on those areas.
The combat is already showing clear signs of improvement, rest remains to be seen, but I have high hopes for Ori 2 because they don't show signs of complacency.
As a person who likes Axiom Verge quite a bit. HK shits on it. Everyone has their own opinions however.
I hope they drop the really hard platforming sections then. I had an easier time with Celeste than some sections in Ori, the respawn and redoing all of it again sometimes sucked ass. Metroidvania is not about being meatboy...
Nooo, I loved those. They were Ori's version of boss fights lol
Ginso tree escape sequence still gives me goosebumps. Shit was epic.
About this:
You can have "lightbulb moments" or you can have objective markers. You can't have both.
This is something Hollow Knight understood for the most part, Ori.. not so much. I expect Ori 2 to be a fantastic platformer like Ori was that I'll be happy to play on day 1 but a meh metroidvania precisely for this reason.
You can have "lightbulb moments" or you can have objective markers. You can't have both.
This is something Hollow Knight understood for the most part, Ori.. not so much. I expect Ori 2 to be a fantastic platformer like Ori was that I'll be happy to play on day 1 but a meh metroidvania precisely for this reason.
My favorite part of the game was the Ginso tree sequence! That shit was amazing, and then you are rewarded with this beautiful tranquil scene immediately after.
Depends on how you place the objective marker. For example, in Super Metroid you get objective markers, but they're on part of the map that are empty so you're left going "how the hell do I get over there"?
It'll be very interesting to me to see how people will react to the story this time. We definitely did try to make the world whole and to elevate what we started with Blind Forest to a whole new level. We actually hired Alexander O. Smith (if you don't know who he is, he has his own Wikipedia page ;)) a while ago to help us with the writing process, he's working on Ori and our yet-to-be-announced project. We finished writing the overall storyline last year and at our Team Retreat there's already been lots of tears. We never consciously try to tell sad stories, but since Ori is all about telling these allegorical tales, I think it's easy for people to identify with our characters.
And don't worry about us copying others too much - we always look at what happens outside our team, but I don't think people will make many connections to Hollow Knight and the likes. I was already surprised that some people thought we copied HK simply cause we now have more NPCs in the world that Ori can interact with - HK wasn't really our reference at all when it came to that. I wanted more NPCs even in Blind Forest (mostly cause I loved what ALTTP did with simple characters that gave you some clues and so on), but doing that the Moon Studios way with all the required animations was just way too expensive. But this time we were able to do it and do it in the way we wanted :)
Our combat system for example is much deeper and much more intricate than what any other Metroidvania has done so far and I think people will objectively be able to agree with that. Every single one of our weapons has their own animation set, it's an animation-commit combat system where we control timing based on the actual animation frames. I don't think it's even fair at all to compare what 2d games before WotW did with WotW in that regard since we're obviously using super advanced tools and built everything upon a super strong foundation. Most Metroidvanias including HK trigger a simple animation and spawn a little effect when you press the attack button - we obviously went way further than that. I don't feel super comfortable talking about this stuff since I'm one of the developers and it could quickly sound like I'm downplaying other games that came before, but this is just how art develops: Someone does something and then the next person pushes that even further and further - I still think in terms of platforming Ori is one of the best games out there in the genre and this time the goal was to do the same for combat... and everything else :D
What i am more worried about is if they are going to focus more on combat and forget the platforming. Ori is unique in that regard where most of the gameplay is platforming related. Most games are a balanced mix of platforming combat and exploration but ori was mostly a platformer with a form of combat that was kind of pushed aside for acrobatic engagement. Its one of the things that makes the game stand out for me.
Sounds awesome. In regards to your yet-to-be-announced project, will we hear any details sometime this year? Or will we have to wait til sometime after Ori 2 releases?
Christ on a bike, Thomas. I was already super hyped about WotW but reading all of that has taken it to another level.
Also just read Alexander's wiki page, he seems like one crazy super talented dude! The story in WotW is going to break a few hearts, isn't it?
