Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
S2 Ep173: Ori and the Will of the Wisps
83 Plays4 years ago
MINOR SPOIERS: Ori and the Will of the Wisps
Join Dave and Jake they return to the Blind Forest (for a time), and venture even further beyond in search of friendship and light in this week's episode!
Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
Join Dave and Jake they return to the Blind Forest (for a time), and venture even further beyond in search of friendship and light in this week's episode!
Thoughts? Comments? Requests for new episodes? Feel free to email them in!
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Hosts' Current States
00:00:42
Speaker
Oh.
00:00:52
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I'm joined by my co-host as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? It's going good. How are you? I'm doing pretty swell. I am awake, conscious, cognizant. If you weren't, I'm creating my own questions.
Skepticism About the New Matrix Trailer
00:01:12
Speaker
I think, I think there was a Matrix trailer that came out. So I only, maybe I just think I'm awake. I don't know.
00:01:18
Speaker
Oh my God, that thing looks so, so stupid. It actually does look really bad. It was like, oh. Do you know what my favorite thing is? When they take something that's good and they're like, hey guys, that was all not a thing. It was different. It was a different thing.
00:01:34
Speaker
or just, you know, cashing in on nostalgia, but not actually doing anything good with it. Yeah. I didn't, I don't think they're going to just retcon the whole thing or be like, it was a little dream. I feel like this is, I got the impression that this is another cycle. Like the original one was a successful cycle, but then the whole point of the matrix series, acknowledging for just for a moment, there were multiple movies. Um, was it Neo broke out of the cycle?
00:02:05
Speaker
Yeah, I thought at the end of the third movie he saved everybody. Yeah, so I mean, I don't know. They clearly they had to like, either backpedal a lot for this one. They basically out noticed season two, The Matrix. We'll see, we'll see where it goes. I have you on record saying that. So I'm saying it could be good. He's doubling back.
00:02:32
Speaker
I mean, I can't deny that that is an unfortunate mechanism to use in media. I literally can't state any examples without spoiling something. But I don't know. I don't like a well-wrapped up story with a bow on it to be like, hey,
00:02:56
Speaker
same people were reintroducing drama to like force it. Like they could have used the world of The Matrix and then just introduced a completely new cast.
Game Trailers and IP Consistency Issues
00:03:08
Speaker
And I think I would have preferred that to bring Keanu back. Yeah, 100 percent. That would make sense because like then you're not tainting the actual world. You're just going off of, hey, this is a cool thing. You like this universe? Here's a little more of something people. Oh, nice. Cool.
00:03:26
Speaker
Yeah. In the same way for like some of the game trailers they had today, even I were complaining about Gardens of the Galaxy because it looks like shit. Of course. But if it was a standalone game, it wasn't tied to an IP. I think people would say, oh, that looks like a fun cinematic type game that I want to check out. Right.
00:03:44
Speaker
Maybe like a holiday game or something like that. Yeah, but like now you're comparing it to the existing thing. You're like, why is it not this? Yeah. And they're like licensing reasons. Yeah, we're going to see a lot more of that, I think, where it's just like, is this the Marvel Cinematic Universe character or is this the comic character, you know, like for licensing the movie? And there's a massive difference.
00:04:07
Speaker
Because the people who they can't line up with the movies just look like the B tier knockoffs at this point.
00:04:16
Speaker
Solid throw. Thank you. For the audience, I checked my phone behind me to land on my bed.
PlayStation Event Highlights
00:04:22
Speaker
It definitely hit something soft-ish, but then it also hit the wall. So we'll find it later, hopefully. Yeah, you got to average it. Did you watch any of the PlayStation stuff today? I did not. I didn't know it was going on until the end of the day or end of the workday. Yeah. But like, all right, let's check Discord and there's 250 messages. OK.
00:04:45
Speaker
And I'm not making my way through all of that. It started when I switched off of work mode and I'm like, dear God. So I did catch some of it. Yeah.
00:04:57
Speaker
I mean, death loop is coming out in five days. So that's, that's for you. I think Ian is also going to check out death loop. He liked the trailer. Yeah. And probably play it late. Um, given that I'll be in another country when it actually launches, but, um, you know, it's not terrible. Also there's a God of war two. Yeah. Rag rock. Yeah. That looks pretty hype.
00:05:24
Speaker
That one actually, the ones that I saw, that one I was probably the most excited for. Like, yeah, I'm going to play Deathloop and I'm sure I'll have a lot of fun with it. But as far as like quality game experience, the I guess they don't have numbers
Main Topic: Ori and the Will of the Wisps
00:05:44
Speaker
anymore, right? Because there was a God of War, God of War II, God of War III. And then I think they restarted with God of War. They did. So now it's just a named entry.
00:05:53
Speaker
Right, God of War Ragnarok, I guess. But the quality was such on that God of War PS4 game that I don't know. I think it's going to be good. It looks very similar from the gameplay shown. It's like, hey, let's take that graphical fidelity and make content for it, expand the story, do all of that. That's probably the right answer is good. Yeah. If it works, just do more of it.
00:06:25
Speaker
Speaking of doing more of it, if it works, I gotta go back to work. Today's episode is on Ori and the Will of the Wisps. It was very difficult. My brain actually pre-filled and the blind forest. That's not it. That was the first one. So what do you think the Will of the Wisps actually is? What's their motivation in this? Kill.
00:06:52
Speaker
Ah. Yeah. That checks out. I mean, traditionally in lore, I think the will of the wisp, like in folklore is to entice people deeper into the forest, right? It's the sirens call looking thing. Like, oh, there's a light in the forest. But no, there are the playful spirits dragging you to your doom.
00:07:19
Speaker
So interesting decision to go with that for an Ori game, I guess, but bulldozing the cotton. What's your take on what the will of the West says, though? I don't fucking know. I I thought of like the the TF question did not think of an answer, if I'm being honest.
00:07:44
Speaker
So yeah, I guess, you know what? They haven't, they haven't escaped because it's a will of the wisps. And I was talking about will though, the wisp, which is obviously completely separate thing. Um, or Ignis well, it's fattest Latin for giddy flame. Yeah. Huh. Right. Yeah. Also, I wanted to throw in my joke of,
00:08:10
Speaker
It's still the same thing. Willow the Wisp and Willow the Wisp is one just the Irish version. Ah, gotcha. That would be funny if it was a localization thing. Oh, Jack O'Lantern is the same thing. I didn't realize that.
00:08:32
Speaker
I gotta do more lore research. I know, right? This is, I'm ready to contribute to the episodes. But it's been a while. We did do an episode on Ori and the Blind Forest and spoiler alert for our opinions, I guess it was good. I think we thought it was pretty good.
00:08:52
Speaker
solid platformer all around, um, Metroidvania type, where you had to go get some different powers, come back to some stuff. But the whole thing was very, obviously, as everyone would know, stylized. Yes. It's really gorgeous for how they lay out things and the parallax backgrounds and making it seem very animated and real. Yeah. And that was an Ori one, Ori two, whoo. Yeah. Sheesh. Jumping into a painting.
00:09:22
Speaker
Yeah, it's insane what they did. The frog guy you encounter who's a big NPC, they make everyone so much more expressive and animated and alive. They like to use some of the
00:09:37
Speaker
When you encountered the spider, they had some strands going into the screen to make you feel more immersed. Stuff like that. There's a lot of effects at play across all of those layers and I think it's worth contrasting this to
00:09:53
Speaker
like a standard platformer where you have action primarily in the foreground and like a basic background. Maybe if you're feeling a little extra, you put some detail into it. And always very much just like layers and layers and layers of content. And the playable layer is somewhere in the middle. And it's just, I don't know, it's it's graphically very, very impressive to say the least.
00:10:23
Speaker
Yeah, it's like the other platform or Metro convenience I can think of at the moment, I was going to be like Hollow Knight. And that'll come up about. And the Catholic one, I literally always forget the name of. Yeah, it's not a solemn sanctuary. It's blasphemous, I think. Blasphemous. Correct. So those are two very different styles where
00:10:44
Speaker
Hollow Knight is much more kind of like minimal, slightly cartoony, and then Blasphemous is all pixel art. And they don't need to do a whole lot of things in the background to fit the style they're going for. And both are still add a lot of detail there, but it's not in the same way. Yeah. Like there are so many other particle effects as you're exploring nature and there's little like lantern flies and other things going on.
00:11:13
Speaker
You know what it kind of reminds me of? And it's not it's not this approach at all, but it was like back when there was a push for graphics, like realism and graphics in video games, there was this whole like rotoscoping craze where people were like like the original Prince of Persia.
00:11:27
Speaker
was a guy literally rotoscoped doing these animations, pulling himself up. And it's like, look how realistic all the animation is. Because it's a person, right? And we moved past that eventually, continued with animation. Ori is coming in from a completely different angle, where rather than just mocapping everything, like a modern action game,
00:11:51
Speaker
It's just a ridiculous amount of really hard work animating lots of frames. And it just looks really good. But it's actually the reason I compared the two is because they're both approaching a level of fidelity that is pretty absurd. Although Ori was more work I'd say than rotoscoping.
00:12:16
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's much more in the fantastical. And I don't like using the word tween because it sounds wrong now. Yeah. But doing that extra bit of animation in between frames. So it looks very fluid. Yeah. Mm hmm. And it's it should looks really fucking good. Watch a trailer. You'd be like, wow, that's a lot of shit going on. It is.
00:12:40
Speaker
Watch Ori jump, dive into water, jump off a ledge, swing a weapon, which we'll get to I guess. I will say on that point Ori too really opened up a lot more as far as movement.
00:12:53
Speaker
like an Ori one, like you had I think two jumps and a dash and you could maybe stick to walls and jump off of them and then now they're like you can jump on poles, you can jump on bubbles, you can jump on other things, you can have things to help you glide, you can dash, you can float, you can do aerial combos with weapons to slow your descent or just hit stuff before you fall.
00:13:17
Speaker
The only disappointment I have for those aerial combos is that I feel like if you have a game that has hang time aerial combos where you're slashing a weapon or whatever, it should start at C up in the corner, work its way up to B, A, or S.
00:13:35
Speaker
Somebody who grew up on the Devil May Cry, I see. That would probably not be in the flavor of Will the Wisps, though I will say it is a far more combat-oriented game than Blind Forest was. Blind Forest, actually, I misremembered this and had to fact-check myself.
00:13:59
Speaker
You just had a standard auto seeking proximity attack. It was literally like mash a button, fire a seeking projectile from your wisp or whatever. It was very, very simple by comparison. Yeah. And now you have, I think your sword is default.
00:14:18
Speaker
Mm hmm. Yeah, you start with the the cutter needle. I think. Yeah. Hold on. Oh, but it is like a very thin and light weapon and you have like a three or four hit combo to start. You can also do that in the air and it's also directional. Yeah. So you can jump and like start hitting stuff above you. If you don't have like a ranged option, you need to hit a flyer. Yeah. And enemies respond to it. You can uppercut lighter enemies. They'll go airborne. Right.
00:14:47
Speaker
You can juggle enemies and Ori, which is absurd. Did you use it a lot? I had a fair amount. A little bit of knockback, try to environmental kill enemies, things like that. I guess you could do with parry in the first one, but that was really the only way to environmental kill anything. Today I learned you get parry. Well, if you jump off something, it's a parry. That's what the move's called in the game.
00:15:17
Speaker
when you redirect a projectile. Oh, OK. Or an enemy, yeah. That's also another thing for movement. If there's projectiles and you have that dash upgrade, you can take the projectile and ory. And essentially, they swap places and directions and velocity. So you can fling projectiles back at enemies, or you can use it as a jumping point to be like, I got to avoid some other shit that's coming. Yeet.
00:15:42
Speaker
Yeah. And it fulfills the criteria of resetting your movement options. So you can jump jump with your double jump, maybe dash, parry a projectile, be launched further up, and then jump jump dash again. And Ori is very much about resetting your movement options. That's so much of the game.
00:16:06
Speaker
I was watching you face a boss last night, and there were so many times where you would jump, see something that was coming, and you need to adjust, and then you dash and reposition. Then you see something else that's coming, and you're like, well, I still have a jump. And then it's just really nice to have all of those tools. The more we've played Smash,
00:16:26
Speaker
the more I appreciate it because like you go off stage and you're like, this person's recovery sucks. But now you're like, all right, I have three things at my disposal. I've used one of them and it just kind of like ticks down. You're like, how am I getting back to stage? When are they going to jump? When's that going to happen? Yeah.
00:16:43
Speaker
movement is, if I were to pick like the gameplay, we talked about the graphics, I guess, a bit. It's just top
Challenging Escape Sequences in Ori
00:16:50
Speaker
tier. There's just nothing prettier. I can't. I can't describe it to you in certain detail. We're going to be like, oh, I know what you mean. Yeah. Watch a trailer. It's like that whole thing about like a picture being worth a thousand words. We're describing animation. We don't have time for that. That's so many words.
00:17:09
Speaker
But the graphics aside, part of the major identity, I feel, of Ori as a platformer is the fluidity of movement. Even more, we said we were going to compare to Hollow Knight, and it's going to happen a lot. Like Hollow Knight,
00:17:26
Speaker
had really good movement, but it usually emphasized areas for conflict or problem solving and things like that in smaller spaces, or it very much blows up areas like here's just a big old room and find a way to reach the top and requires you to chain different mechanics and apparatusize? Apparatus? Apparatus uses?
00:17:56
Speaker
Yeah, apparatus uses to reach the top. And I just, I realized that in my play through. It's very much, it's very open. Yeah, I feel like Hollow Knight's thing is much more precision. Because while you still had a double jump and a dash, and then you could hit stuff with the nail as like a down aerial combo to continue jumps, a lot of things with Ori for how cinematic it is,
00:18:23
Speaker
you're like using a lot of things at once and dashing through. And that's why like when you have those big escape sequences, it feels good because all the animations happening at once, you're using all of your mobility options. And you feel like the pressure of like, go or you will die.
00:18:42
Speaker
Yeah, I mean escape sequences are, they were very prevalent in Blind Forest and they're equally as prevalent here, right? It's part of the Ori formula of, is the area done? Run. Does the boss have a health bar? If not, you should probably leave. And in Blind Forest, you didn't, your tail was just leave because they're, again, I misremembered this, there were no bosses in Blind Forest. You didn't fight any bosses.
00:19:09
Speaker
Um, you just run away from them. I guess that's true. Well, weird. My brain kind of puts them together a little bit, but, uh, yeah, that was one of the major differences for will of the wisps is now there's massive high detail, incredibly well-animated bosses. Um,
00:19:33
Speaker
Kind of like with the legend of his elder sort of format, where it's like, did you clear the area? Okay. Well, here's the area master drop music kicks in health bar. Did you like that they added bosses?
00:19:49
Speaker
I think they were a good overall improvement. What's funny is the only thing I really didn't particularly like about the bosses is that they're animated so well and so thoroughly that it can be difficult to sometimes track what a hitbox is for the boss attacking you or to also hit the boss.
00:20:14
Speaker
But that's my only gripe. Otherwise, like, I mean, I like combat in video games. Yeah, it feels really good because of how much effort they put into the combat to be like, hey, besides just, you know, kicking some little guys in the shins, here's actually your test of how well did you learn the mobility? How well did you learn the combat? Yeah.
00:20:37
Speaker
I mean, maybe you're one of those people who didn't invest anything into combat and you're like, I'm going to put it all into a heal. OK, you can do that. I'll just take a bit. The heal is very powerful, too. I only played on normal difficulty, but their game was like, we recommend this one.
Boss Battles and Difficulty Levels in Ori
00:20:53
Speaker
And I was like, OK.
00:20:55
Speaker
Yeah, it's a good place to be. Basically, so a lot of times I will play games on hard, but if at the difficulty slider, it's like, hey, if the description for hard is, hey, we intended this for people who have already beaten the game, be like, oh, man, I don't have my ID on me. I guess I'll go normal. I'll go normal.
00:21:16
Speaker
I feel like if that's supposed to be the tailored experience, so to speak, I just ride with that. If I'm really loving it and looking for a challenge, I can definitely go back. But I don't want to start at a higher difficulty and be like, oh, this sucks. And then I have to bump it down. It feels like I've given up in some way. Yeah.
00:21:41
Speaker
There is, and I think Ori, like we're talking about difficulty in bosses, kind of jumping around a little bit, but difficulty in bosses like Ori is a fairly
00:21:50
Speaker
I could just be bad, but Ori is a relatively difficult platformer in certain sections, like one and two, Blind Forest and Willa the Wisps had different sections where it was like, this is pretty much a nice calming, relaxing walk in the park. You can deal with all these enemies. There's no problem. And then it's like escape sequence. I'm like, Oh geez. And it's like 50 tries later and I'm like, Oh geez. Um,
00:22:18
Speaker
They literally know that it's going to be tough to clear the escape sequences. So they carry the music track across attempts. You don't do a hard load. The music keeps playing. Yeah, that's good. It's good. I mean, it definitely feels.
00:22:37
Speaker
kind of like defeating or tedious to have something like literally restart. You're like, ah, the top of the song again. Uh huh. Top of the song to you. If we're going off the Irish humor again. Um, yeah, it just, it keeps you in the mode, the mode of I need to beat this. Yeah. I failed a couple of times, but like, it just kind of keeps egging you forward a little bit. I was literally, as you're describing that and like the positive aspect of it, I was just, my brain went to the final fantasy fight start sound. It's like,
00:23:08
Speaker
Or maybe if for some reason Undertale is like, I'm imagining of like a boss fight where every time you die, it just restarts with that. Or even where something like Super Meat Boy where you restart really quickly. It's just like, it absolutely destroyed me. Yeah, that would drive people insane. I'm sure they play tested that early and then nobody's ever done it since. They're like, hey, this is a bad idea. You're right, Jim, it is. Yeah.
00:23:37
Speaker
And one of the bosses actually did give me a pretty hard time. I probably took five or six attempts to beat it. It was like a whole six. I know, right? Well, I don't remember mine, so I can't judge. Well, the reason I say that is because the heal ability in Ori is ridiculously powerful. Like the equivalent, when you get hit, you probably, if people play Legend, yeah, you take a couple pips. It's like Legend of Zelda damage.
00:24:05
Speaker
But by comparison, you can get so many heart containers, right? And your heal heals like four or five of them. I know you can put some things to upgrade it. I didn't even do that. It's already really good.
00:24:22
Speaker
Yeah, it's just like you have mana and you have health, so you can exchange some mana for health at a really generous rate. Absolutely. You obviously have to be in a safe spot to do it on the ground to channel like, I have the power, and then you get health back. It's very similar to Hollow Knight's heal, actually. All right, so anyway, Hollow Knight.
00:24:44
Speaker
Have we done an episode on Hollow Knight? Feels like we should. Probably should. Which boss was it, if you don't mind sharing and being a little vague? Yeah, I'd say Aquatic. It was the boss of the Aquatic area. If you remember that.
00:25:01
Speaker
I forget so much of the aquatic area honestly. That's fair. You played it a lot. So for clarity, they played this game significantly earlier than I did. When it came out. Which was a year ago, I think at this point.
00:25:16
Speaker
So I'm catching up. I've got a more recent experience, but jumps all over the place. There's a like tentacle like attacks coming from the walls. And he floods the arena at some point.
00:25:33
Speaker
And that was the part that got me was I was like, wait a minute, if the arena is flooded with water and Ori can only heal if Ori is standing, if Ori is in neutral, neutral position, you can't do it on a wall, can't do it in the air, can't do it if you're leaning over a ledge, you got to be in neutral. And the neutral was all flooded with water. And I'm like, oh, geez, I'm going to have to actually use skill here.
00:25:59
Speaker
Yeah, it's, it's always weird when that happens. You're like, my safety net's gone. It's being pushed out of the nest and into the boss fight. Basically. I had a very similar experience with the last boss. Oof. Which I am not at all familiar with because I'm right at the cusp of beating the game.
Evolved Combat and Shard System in Ori
00:26:23
Speaker
I won't spoil it for you or the listeners, but similar type of thing. We're ground, not really an option for you. That's fair. Most of the boss fights they use, so like the energy crystals you can get energy from, they respawn after just a period of time. And I think most of the boss fights have one of them. So that in conjunction with the heal just means like,
00:26:48
Speaker
It's perfectly valid if you're playing really cautious. If you're playing like a Dark Souls player where you're like, I'm not going to attack the boss. I want to learn all 37 of his moves first. OK, memorize. Let's go. Yeah. It's perfect for that because you can just like heal.
00:27:02
Speaker
grab more energy, heal, grab more energy, like time is in your favor. Until you remove the ability to heal, then we'll just like, freak it dead. Sometimes bosses will have ads as well, so you can kind of smack around for some either health or mana. Yeah, they'll drop both. And we haven't talked too much about like the combat options. I have pros and cons, I think, for it.
00:27:31
Speaker
But Ori won by comparison, was just like press button to deal damage to a nearby enemy. And this has a lot. Well, we already talked about the sword a little bit. What else do they got?
00:27:44
Speaker
So number two, I think that I got it was like a slam attack and it's basically just a power hammer. And I loved it. It's a hefty swinging comparison. It's so good. It's very slow. You usually wouldn't want to like multi hit anything with it because it's so slow, but it knocks enemies back, which is great in a game with a bunch of environmental hazards like spikes on the wall.
00:28:10
Speaker
Um, can like break shields and like send them airborne. If you use the upward punch, upward hit, it's just so good. I liked that one. I didn't find myself using it as much because if I have a fast option like that and like, well, I'll just dodge it out of the way and then snap in the ass a bunch of times.
00:28:31
Speaker
So you picked the quick slicing one under the hopes that eventually you would get some crit modifiers. Those would come in the game later and you'd have attack speed. Yup, you know me well. Versus trying to like time and space a hammer, which you were doing a really good job when I was watching you play. Yeah, I was doing a strength faith build, Ori, a little wisp. They also do give you a bow. True. That one takes energy. Yeah. That was one of the changes or differences there.
00:29:00
Speaker
And it's not homing, so you do have to aim it with a D stick. I didn't really use this as much either for combat itself, but it does come up in a lot of mechanics where you need to trigger something at a distance. So it's nice to kind of have that thrown in. Usually I just say avocado toast and just boom at a distance. I'm sorry, I had to.
00:29:30
Speaker
It's good. My brain is just tired. So I'm just going to laugh at these things and not have like a good witty response. That's fair. But I just like when they throw in certain
00:29:43
Speaker
It is a puzzle mechanic, but it's also a combat option. And it gets thrown in throughout the level. So you have to mix your mobility and combat. Very cool. It starts out not super viable. It doesn't do that much damage. But you can get a shard, which you slot into available shard slots, I guess, that makes it split into multiple shots.
00:30:07
Speaker
And then that chart can later be upgraded. So like the base one is splits into three and each shot does 50% damage. So you're like, Oh, you know, 150% damage. If you shoot it like a shotgun, everybody gets hit, but then you can keep upgrading it. And it's like splits into four and each shot deals 50% damage. And you're like, wait a minute. It splits into five. And I think that's where it caps out, but pretty good damage. Yeah, literally.
00:30:34
Speaker
They have a lot of good options too for these passes. Because I think they had a handful of things. But it's usually, do you want to be able to stick to walls? Do you want one extra jump? Do you want a little bit more max health? They felt fairly vanilla in comparison. Whereas now, with all the combat options you have, there's a lot of build variety.
00:30:57
Speaker
So you can go like glass cannon and you're like, I want to deal more damage. You'll take more damage. Yeah, yeah, sure. But like I can also slide a thing where I take less damage. So I just want to do more damage. Yeah.
00:31:08
Speaker
Yeah, so I looked it up real quick because I needed a refresh here. They had an ability tree in Ori 1 where you kind of just build out along the tree, which is, you know, tree Ori, makes sense, checks out. And that's how you unlocked things like jumping multiple times, healing. Yeah, so it's kind of like utility, combat, or mana conversion, whatever that is.
00:31:38
Speaker
Yeah. And one of the other things that they changed a little bit. So Ori won. They had a save system where you could kind of like channel energy, your mana, and be like, hey, here's an after image. And that was your respawn point if you died.
00:32:02
Speaker
instead of just relying on the most recent Spirit Well, which are like the fast travel points. And they did away with that entirely for Ori too. It's just basically the last solid ground that's safe that you were standing on or the beginning of an escape sequence if you're escaping a boss. Yeah, it's how do you feel about that change?
00:32:25
Speaker
I think it's good. It sucks in any game to kind of be playing through a thing. And then you die due to some mishap or your own incompetence. And then you're punished by going a surprising amount back. And you're like, now I have to redo the exact same thing I did for however long. And it feels
00:32:44
Speaker
Like, such a heavy punishment. It's like, what if you went to mow the grass and then you missed a single blade of grass and your dad's like, do the whole fucking thing again? You're like, really? The whole thing? Why can't I just do this last piece of the scissor?
00:32:58
Speaker
Mm-hmm. It feels way too punishing Like the game is definitely challenging definitely fun but I feel like to Appeal to
Ability Management and Control Systems in Ori
00:33:09
Speaker
more people in general and not just be like it's hard for the sake of being hard All right, if they fuck up just set them back a little bit make them do it again, right? But not make them big this was the last place you saved technically. Mm-hmm
00:33:22
Speaker
It makes it like a resource, but this is the type of thing I would expect more from, like, Hollow Knight, Dark Souls-y, like, challenge and decision-making, then exploration jump all over the place, movement, Ori, right? So it was a logical change. Any time I think about, like,
00:33:43
Speaker
making save points more accessible. I go to Call of Duty, actually. One of them is just because they had war quotes whenever you're respawning. It's like reloading the sequence. But it would always just put you back to the beginning of the sequence, right before you entered the room, right before the firefight broke out. And I don't know, maybe I'm becoming a filthy casual.
00:34:12
Speaker
But that's fine with me, right? I don't want to replay sections of a game that I've already replayed. I say having replayed Dark Souls 2 many times recently. Well, one's an opt-in versus the other one. You're technically gated by it. It doesn't feel as good. Yeah. Also, holy shit, we got off weapons real quick. Yeah, there's still a lot to talk about, I think, in the combat. Did you get to experience any of the fire chucking?
00:34:42
Speaker
I did eventually, so this is one thing. I was like, what are you talking about, Dave? Because he's talking like, you can jump off the thing. And I'm like, what thing? My advice on this relatively low-spoil talk-through for Willow the Wisps is just go to the ice area first. Just go to the ice area first. Yep, that's what I did. I eventually did get it. I was like, aye.
00:35:11
Speaker
don't have to interact with a lot of mechanics that the game was trying to get me to interact with earlier. So I will explain. I feel like we should explain this a little bit. Yeah, we have to. I don't. Again, it's it's an option for combat where basically like you hold a ball of fire and kind of shot put it out and you get like a little arc reticle for where it's going to go. I think it deals combat damage. It was used as a puzzle mechanic for a lot of things. It causes a burn dot as well. Nice.
00:35:39
Speaker
Again, it's just slap stuff with sword and dodge, but you can throw it and because it is a projectile, you can do the parry off of it. So you throw it above yourself and then you jump and dash off of it. So now you have yet another mobility option, which feels really cool. Which is huge in Ori because even though you can have multiple jumps, they're all low altitude jumps.
00:36:03
Speaker
One of the key design principles you can see throughout the whole series is they absolutely ration until the late game the ability to gain vertical height easily. It's all just horizontally you can go forever, but vertical height is really hard to get. Or you're short.
00:36:27
Speaker
Yeah. I was just about to say that as you were explaining it, because like that extra little hop, it's not, you don't get anything out of it. It's like doing a crouch jump in Halo, right? Yeah. What it's, I guess not comparable, but like for the height difference it is, but you get more mileage out of it. If you have momentum in a horizontal direction and then you have the extra little bit of air time, thus extending your distance jumps. Yeah. It's, it's incredibly good. Once I got it, I was like,
00:36:56
Speaker
I feel like I've made a mistake going to this area like last. I think it was the last area that I did because it's collect four MacGuffins before you can unlock the last area. And I was like, man, I should have started with this MacGuffin.
00:37:15
Speaker
It's it's convenient in certain things and like as I was watching you play through some I was thinking you had said MacGuffin I'm like right why wouldn't I could utilize that MacGuffin to overcome soft school would you like wouldn't just take it better than MacGuffin
00:37:29
Speaker
But I was misunderstanding a different power that Jake had. And there are a lot of them. So I don't think that this is necessarily criticism of the game, but this is advice for the developers who are obviously listening to us a year after the game launched. There's a bunch of abilities in combat, like too many, I think. There's probably like 10.
00:37:54
Speaker
It feels like that you can bind at any point, but you have to bind them at least on a controller, which you're probably playing this with the controller. I really hope so. Two, three keys. The jump key is reserved because of mobility.
00:38:10
Speaker
And then you have like the three other buttons on your controller, like for the right hand. And that's it. Everything else is reserved. So you have like 10 options to choose from. One of them could be heal, right? One of them is throw this fireball so you can jump higher. One of them is your basic attack. You're like, now pick from all of those options what you want to use at any given time.
00:38:37
Speaker
That's so it's too much. Are you saying it's too much in a sense of like decision paralysis? It's not necessary that you don't have the option to use all of them at once. It's more of that. I think I really found myself in a situation where it was like, OK, I do need to equip this one ability that's necessary for this area. But I do want to keep heal just in case we take damage. And it's not difficult to swap between them. So it's not like it's
00:39:06
Speaker
You had to open a menu in Dark Souls and you died while you were doing so. The game basically pauses. I think it does pause, actually. So you can rebind these at any point with a left trigger. But it's just inconvenient. Like, why take people out of it?
00:39:24
Speaker
Like, if they could have done left trigger to just so you can bind all combined three of these, sorry, you can bind these three abilities, or you could hold left trigger for three alternate abilities. That would have been amazingly better. Like, Oh, I gotta switch out to my combat set.
00:39:44
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. You have six things. Let me hold left trigger and triangle so I'll heal. Or in this case, you know, like I never thought Jake would give Monster Hunter praise in their design. But here we are. Right. I mean, maybe that's where it's coming from. It's just it's significantly better than stopping the game, even if it's opening a radial menu to do something. Yeah, it does.
00:40:08
Speaker
So like I've been playing some Witcher 3 spoilers. And when you consume food, whether that's water, rotten meat, alcohol, you get like a healing buff and whatever else with it. But to do so, you do a trigger and then like an arrow in either direction. The game slows down a lot to the point where it's basically paused. And then once that's resolved, I just go back to like hitting stuff. Yeah, it is kind of weird of like a
00:40:38
Speaker
I guess if you go to something like Skyrim, oh, I'm in combat, my health's low, pauses, eats a bunch of cheese, resumes. So it does kind of take you out of it for a bit. I see where you're coming from. I didn't get that as much for me personally, but it's definitely valid.
00:40:56
Speaker
I think particularly if you want to play Ori at a more casual pace where you're like, because you can upgrade these abilities. I'll have beaten the game and I won't have unlocked half of them. There's an AoE fire ability, which just causes burn damage to the enemies around you. There's the abilities we've described so far. There's some other ones that you can also unlock. I'm not familiar with all of them. I haven't unlocked them.
00:41:21
Speaker
But I don't feel like most of them are necessary. There's like a gust of wind you can send out. But if I had six lots and I could just hold one key and use the others, like, oof.
00:41:38
Speaker
I felt like it would be so much better. Anyways. I definitely encourage you to use more of them because I'm the type of guy where I find something that works. Like the sword and shield from the beginning of the game. Like, got it. Let's do it. And then that's how I learned to play throughout the rest of the game. That's that's the problem you're having with the Witcher is you're playing with the shield. You're not supposed to play with the shield. You're supposed to use two swords. What? He dual will. Yeah.
00:42:06
Speaker
Specifically, this is what I would equip. The heal, if you're holding left trigger, is to the triangle button because you're going to be stationary. You have to be stationary for it. Who cares if you have to hold a trigger? The quick attack is on X, but if you hold L and you hit X, it's the heavy attack with a hammer because, again, you probably have time, you know, throw it out there. Just saying.
00:42:36
Speaker
I mean, I don't hate the idea. I'm going to make a mod. This is where I'm going with this. It fundamentally changes the game to allow this. I like that your mod also combines the controllers of Xbox and PlayStation. I know. I opened with Triangle. Triangle, right? Really? I don't think so.
00:42:56
Speaker
Doesn't look good. That all being said, though, Ori one didn't have combat and I love the combat in this. We've talked about it. It's freaking great. And again, it's part of it is just how it feels.
00:43:10
Speaker
like weighted wise. And the other part is like the animation of it. Like there are times like where I've interacted with something in the game, like it feels a little bit off or it doesn't feel committal for what the action is. But in this, like every jump you do, every hit you do, choice. Yeah.
00:43:30
Speaker
It's basically they threw so much money at this game and time. They had so many resources after Blind Forest did well. And they invested it wisely in this game. And I mean, it's just really good. That sounds like a conclusion. I don't believe we're there yet. We'll come back and I'll say the same thing later in the episode.
00:43:58
Speaker
Well, I mean, it is true though. Like we have talked about a lot of game sequels where it's, Hey, how do I build off the existing thing that people liked? How do I change it up? So that's different, but not change the core of it's people still recognize, Oh, this is this thing that I like. And I think they really just made everything better. They made the combat, not shit. They made it good and interesting. All of the visuals better mobility options, better and improved.
00:44:27
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, they have the same options. They just expanded on it. They literally have the same abilities, the same controls. The only thing that was probably a step in ambition was largely the combat. The decision to really have actual combat matter more because the enemies in this game are much more similar and aggressive to
00:44:53
Speaker
like Hollow Knight enemies where they're actual obstacles to you. By design, combat almost wasn't a thing in Ori 1, and you could skip past almost all of the enemies. You could just speed run through the areas avoiding them. You're not really incentivized to do that. And will the wisps, because as we established, wisps want murder. So the wisps call for blood. They whisper in Ori's ear. Are you going to let them get away for their sins?
00:45:23
Speaker
Yeah, there are a lot of enemies you could still get around, but if you leave them, you're going to get smacked in the ass by something. And also, every time you kill an enemy, you're still getting an in-game resource you can use to then upgrade stuff later on. Yeah, souls. Yeah.
00:45:39
Speaker
Dark souls. You're killing pygmies? That's weird. They're fertile, it's fine. Yeah, it's health, energy, money. There's no reason to spare the weak. You are the powerful, you are the orre, go for it. The other week we're talking about the Satanic Temple and now we're talking about some wildly different views.
00:46:06
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I mean, the game is called God of Warry. So it's right there. Ooh. So anyway, another character I like in Rivals of Aether is, um, um, it would be interesting though, because, uh, for anybody who doesn't know there is a game Rivals of Aether, which is a pixelized, whatever the fuck genre smashes in.
Diverse Environments and Challenges in Ori
00:46:28
Speaker
It's not a true fighter, but it's, I think the platform, the brawler or something platform fight fighter. You're right.
00:46:34
Speaker
Ori is a character in that game, but it's Ori from Ori 1. So it'll be interesting to see if they ever do anything from Ori 2. They only have, they have two buttons. It's jump and auto attack homing projectile.
00:46:52
Speaker
For the Ori 2 character, it's a pause. Choose which ability you want in this specific instant. You basically need like a Kazi grab to get the pause-like effect in Smash. Wow. I'm playing Kazi tonight just because I'm just going to. It's accurate though. You want to watch this? I do like the locales in Ori as well. The areas are very diverse.
00:47:21
Speaker
Truth be told I can't remember all of them from Ori1. I did remember some diversity there. So in Ori2, there's definitely the snow area, which we kind of alluded to. How'd you feel about that? It was good. I did like that. One of the core design decisions across all of the areas is like adversity.
00:47:43
Speaker
And then you reach the shrine, you get your upgrade, and it's like, by the way, this is the fast pass to not having to deal with that nonsense you were dealing with. And I believe that the frozen area, the snowy area, is the most extreme example of that. The fast pass is so good it works in other areas. Yeah.
00:48:07
Speaker
There's a lot of hardgating for platforming options and how you get around because a lot of things are frozen over. Fire upgrade. So it is cool to see that one way, get the upgrade and then go back. But that was a really cool design. As I mentioned, I don't really remember much of the water area.
00:48:30
Speaker
Yeah, it's not. I didn't particularly like it. This is one gripe I did have with the game. You brought up the water area. Beautiful. Absolutely gorgeous. Of course. Loved it. The whole game. But particularly the water area. Lush, verdant. Looks good. It's like at least 10 green mana. But the problem I had was that it's full of water.
00:48:53
Speaker
which is like another 10 blue mana. And I can't breathe in water.
00:49:02
Speaker
Unless I bought a super cheap upgrade that the game unlocked at some point That lets me breathe in water and then it never told me about that upgrade So I literally I like looked up online. I was like I can't make it through this area because of the suffocation It's like oh, yeah, don't go to this area till you can breathe underwater I'm like, huh
00:49:26
Speaker
I'll do that then. And then it's just like so cheap by comparison. I had so much money. I just didn't have that passive. So do you actually need that for a part like you're hard gated for if you can't actually breathe infinitely underwater? There's two abilities. I don't think it's strictly necessary. There's one long underwater section with no air bubbles or anything. It was a combination of me lacking a water mobility option.
00:49:55
Speaker
and that that screwed me over. But I actually I found like a bug in the game that let me like make it through that section without the water mobility unlock.
00:50:11
Speaker
I could like, there's these crush plates. I know exactly where you mean. If you die to the crush plate, it actually stays stuck in the position, like in a neutral position in the middle and you can just swim above it and avoid it entirely. So if you die three times or two times and then bait the last plate, you can just like swim past and you don't have to dash at all.
00:50:34
Speaker
Hmm, caveat, you still need the mobility in the section right after that. So I spent, I wasted a lot of time, basically.
00:50:46
Speaker
I do like how you're kind of going online like, are there any other asthmatics out here? They're like, we're all using inhalers, my guy. He's breathing hard. Yeah, I agree though. Anytime you're underwater, in comparison, it's not the same type of movement and mobility that you've become accustomed to throughout the rest of the game. Because you're now swimming and you have an air timer.
00:51:15
Speaker
It's not bad, though. It's like everything else in the game. It's very fluid, no pun intended. Yeah, it's a nice mix-up for sure. But I definitely found myself the most frustrated, well, there. And the other area we're about to talk about, which I had trouble seeing, the darkness.
00:51:35
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. I was like, what was that area? Oh, right. The darkness. Yeah. Which is like all spikes and you have to be in light. Otherwise you die. So you have to follow certain things that provide light. Again, it's a move rapidly. Yeah. Like from light source to light source. It's cool in concept. But then if you're struggling with it, it kind of grades on you just a little bit.
00:52:01
Speaker
But then, of course, like all other areas afterwards, you're like, hey, do you want to get back? No, I've unlocked everything. Do you want to fly? I'll call you a plane. I know a guy. Right. Yeah. You want like superpowers or something? Sure. Here you go. I actually do have this. This one I have a gripe with because the the issue I have with the darkness area is I want to test the bounds of whatever playable area I'm in. And by that, I mean like
00:52:29
Speaker
If you drop me in the middle and there's a path to the left and there's a path to the right, I wanna see if I can reach something on the left and if I can reach something on the right. And it's fairly arbitrary in some of these areas, like in the dark area. I feel like I can make it to that light source, oh, I was wrong, I died. I feel I can make it this time, okay, I know I was wrong, I died. I need to do something else. And that trial error gameplay is not the most rewarding
00:52:59
Speaker
I would say, but sometimes it's just because I'm missing something simple and it kind of clicks once I get it. So I wouldn't count that as a full negative. No, but I mean, I still had trouble with certain tells throughout the game in general.
00:53:16
Speaker
I wasn't sure exactly where to go at a given point because I missed one small thing. I'm like, oh, I didn't realize that was a thing. And then I think I looked up probably two things for this game where I'm like, all right, I'm missing something. What is it?
00:53:33
Speaker
IGN says like you're dumb. I'm like, oh, right. I was dumb. Yeah, I did the same. I had to look at at least one thing probably, too. Well, it's like even like at the when you were fighting the one boss and it was doing a phase change and you were going off to the left and dying, you went off to the right and died. I'm like, I think you can just wait in the middle and then you died. I'm like, oh, and both of us didn't realize at the time it was the start of an escape sequence. Right. Yeah.
00:54:03
Speaker
Like it definitely had some degree of tell where it's like these areas are dangerous. You can't go here But I thought like oh if you wait, I'll go to another phase of the boss. No, right The health bar probably vanished. That was the tell we probably ball should have been on the lookout for a bit
00:54:22
Speaker
I think what's kind of funny is, so a lot of games, Resident Evil I think is very known for this, is like make weak spots, very obvious. Make them glow yellow, make them glow red. Hollow Knight does this by having the exposed infection, like areas that egg looking yellow. And you're like, that's probably what I need to hit.
00:54:48
Speaker
And this game doesn't really do that. It doesn't make boss weak points super obvious. So because there's no absence of... I don't know if I'm arguing in favor of literal glowing red weak points on bosses, because it is so trite and cliche, but it reads a lot better. And having the absence of something like that here is very noticeable, for me at least.
00:55:17
Speaker
Yeah, like any of the bosses that you face are actual like full on big creatures compared to Ori, but they're creatures, so they're not going to change their coloration and say, hit me in the dick type of
Immersion and Storytelling in Ori
00:55:30
Speaker
thing. Yeah, like spray an axe where they would be most vulnerable.
00:55:34
Speaker
Because it would definitely take you out of the immersion and the design if you saw like, oh, the head is kind of glowing and highlighted a little bit, right? But at the same time, I saw you try and hit that spider's butt like 15 times. I know. It's impassable. It doesn't do anything. Trying to hit that booty. But no, it was the head hitbox. But you had to wait for it to be available to you because the character was moving around a lot, right? Right.
00:56:03
Speaker
But those are all relatively minor gripes. I know you play significantly more platformers than I do. What are your impressions of Ori and Willy the Wisps? I really liked it.
00:56:18
Speaker
So I will add to my story of I played it when it came out. I did. I played it for about 10 hours and I was kind of exploring, having a good time. And at a point, I didn't really know where to go. I think I looked it up, but my route was so vague and nebulous that I wasn't sure which guide or YouTube video to follow.
00:56:40
Speaker
I have that exact same problem. It's like text, go to the right, jump on this thing. I'm like, where am I? Where are the other steps? How did you get here? It's like somebody's giving you directions and they're at a separate Taco Bell. I'm like, what? I'm at the pizza hut. I'm at the Taco Bell, but I'm at the combination pizza hut and Taco Bell. And still really loved it. But at that point in time, I kind of said,
00:57:05
Speaker
You know what? We'll come back to it." And it was probably like a good six months before I picked it up again and I literally just started fresh. I said like, hey, let's just do it again and go through and then if we get stuck, we'll look it up and keep moving through. And then I beat 99% of the game.
00:57:23
Speaker
I didn't beat the final boss because I got impatient at not being able to heal in midair. And, uh, whoa, whoa. The reason that you didn't beat the final boss, I feel is so that we wouldn't accidentally spoil anything about like the final boss for the listeners. I was in the same boat. I was like, I refuse to beat this game. Well, I would just always jump in and be like, why can't I heal? Okay. Saved it. Um, but no, it is, it's a really good game. And if you enjoyed Ori one.
00:57:53
Speaker
This is... I would say the ideal successor. Probably, right? Like if you played Ori-1 and you didn't play this one, like I'm glad we could tell you it came out, I guess. Thanks for following up the news, guys. Yeah, right. Also, I liked Ori-1's story better, but all the NPCs and like cute little side characters they have, so endearing, so nice. Yes.
00:58:20
Speaker
I will say that this game is significantly more alive from an NPC perspective. There's literally an area where it's like, and here's the residential district. It's like the equivalent of woodland creatures. And man, having a hub is just great if you populate it with a bunch of cute monkey creatures or something.
00:58:46
Speaker
And also just hubs and games are great because you're like, crap, where was that upgrade thing? Right, let me go back to the one location where all of the upgrade things are. And you might even remember that when it comes time to learn how to breathe underwater, but I didn't.
00:59:05
Speaker
I don't think I'm ending on that. I was debating making a comment like, put the sonic drowning edit here. It's terrifying. Those little sonic drowning clips. Anyways.
00:59:23
Speaker
Yeah, it's very much alive. A lot of really interesting NPCs. The game is just straight up better in most ways. I agree on this story. I feel like the story of the first was a little bit more concise and it does more without telling you as much. This game does use text more because there's just more voice characters. But I don't consider it bad necessarily either because there's still plenty of, you know,
00:59:51
Speaker
storytelling like kinetic storytelling through just action and in particular Ori one Ori two like if there's a cutscene like action you can tell how characters feel based off of their physical demeanor right like Ori's ears will go down when she said I think she
01:00:12
Speaker
is Ori, boy or girl, often misconception, gender, any. Okay. Um, I don't know how to use a pronoun for that. I mean, Ori was essentially a ball of light from a tree. So that's true. Um, but, uh, yeah, ears go down and it like is visibly sad. You don't have to have someone tell you that and the gamer lies on
01:00:39
Speaker
being able to recognize, like, oh, yeah, during this particular scene, that that person's probably bothered or angry or sad. I will say it's still the story is still good. It just it didn't catch me in the same way. Right. But like I do like the antagonist design so much. Yeah. This game has a lot of things with like giant scary birds, the series, I should say, giant scary birds.
01:01:10
Speaker
That's it. I guess it's fair. Giant birds are scary. Yeah. I'm not even a fan of most normal sized birds.
01:01:22
Speaker
But I agree, it's quite good. I don't even know what the overall critical scores are, but gonna go on a limb and say they're good also. I would personally probably pick it up on sale because I don't really play platformers that much. If you're a platformer fishing auto, you've probably already played it, but maybe even pick it up before it's on sale if you really, really wanna play something. Otherwise, it's really freaking good. I would put it up there with
01:01:51
Speaker
the top five platformers that I would actually play. The top five platformers that you have played? Yeah, I've probably played at least six, I think, over the years. I think there's got to be a Mario in there. Hollow Knight's, like, not only on the number one spot, but like, poured cement all over the number one spot, so Hollow Knight can't move from that spot.
Final Thoughts and Listener Engagement
01:02:16
Speaker
It's really hard to beat that from various aspects.
01:02:20
Speaker
anytime i'm thinking like maybe this one thing could be slightly better than hollow night i remember like rocketing across the way i'm like oh right nevermind no other games gonna make me feel like hollow night felt as far as.
01:02:37
Speaker
Finishing like a certain palace area type thing with the music. Oh, yeah But also like Ori had some really good feels for me. Yeah still highly recommend Yeah, if you like if you're interested in this episode
01:02:54
Speaker
If you really like Ori, go back, listen to our first one. And then the suggested, I'm going to pretend that I'm Google Analytics for a second. If you like the tone and feel of the atmosphere that Ori has and you want to see it in another game, check out our Faria episode, which is a card game. It's on Steam. Music in that one. Very similar to my ear, at least. And also freaking good.
01:03:21
Speaker
That's it. That's the suggested analytics that means that the episode. But if you guys do have suggestions for other platformers that you would personally recommend or any game whatsoever, you can feel free to feel free to send those in to soapstone podcast at gmail.com or you could join the discussion on Facebook. Always a lively place at Facebook.com slash soapstone podcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good night.
01:03:55
Speaker
Yeah.
01:04:54
Speaker
Oh.