Ori and the Will of the Wisps

Ori and the Will of the Wisps is an outstanding – if too safe – sequel to the already great Blind Forest, boasting the same mesmerizing aesthetic, haunting soundtrack, and engaging platformer mechanics. It’s an impressive adventure that, despite all its strengths, still doesn’t do much to evolve the series: it develops more the combat aspect of the game and introduce some sidequests and characters to help flesh out the world, but these elements pale in comparison with the others.

The story in Will of the Wisps revolves around the search for a cute baby owl called Ku. She was frustrated that she wasn’t able to fly, so after Ori helps her do it, they are caught in a fierce storm and get separated from each other in an unknown land. Ori – a forest spirit in the form of a glowing fox – sees himself in a strange land full of monsters and fierce beasts with the mission to find Ku and cure the land.

Unlike Blind Forest, which had a memorable first cutscene that was completely disconnected from the rest of the game, Will of the Wisps presents a more cohesive whole. The search for Ku is integrated into your quest – everything that Ori does moves him a step forward toward Ku – and, eventually, some developments connect both goals, making saving the little owl and curing the land the same thing.

It’s not a particularly moving story – there’s nothing like the aforementioned cutscene of the first game with its devastating sense of finality – but it has its touching moments. The narrative, however, doesn’t know what to do with some of the old characters, which appear heading to Ori in some cutscenes, but never impact the events in any shape or form.

What the narrative in the Ori games nails is making the antagonists relatable: despite being fierce, scary monsters with evil eyes, they all have a sad backstory that reframes their behavior as a result of being alone and ostracized by others. At one point, Shriek – a huge bird with strange legs that  make it look deformed – will be hunting Ori relentlessly, and at another, it will be seeking shelter under the fossilized wings of her parents.

There are more characters to meet this time around, such as the bird Tokk – who loves ancient lore – the giant and wise frog Kwolok that guards the marshes, and the various Moki, little ferrets with pointed ears and bright yellow eyes that like to speak together in a funny way.

These characters sometimes give you quests. Some are memorable – like the one called Family Reunion, in which you have to build a house for a Moki and then tell his family the good news: its outcome could suit a storyline in Bloodborne. This quest sells more than anything else in the game the horrible state that the world is in: the wells have become poisoned, the forests have become the lair of feral beasts, but it’s the destiny of a small ferret in search of a safe place for his family that tells the player that things may not end well. It makes the stakes feel real.

Unfortunately, most sidequests are not like that, never coming close to this kind of poignancy. They’re basically fetch quests: Tokk will tell you he lost his compass, so you go to the designated place to find the compass. A Moki may have lost their acorn, so you go to the designated place – with the required ability – to retrieve the acorn. There’s a big quest that has you trading items with several characters, but you soon realize that this is the only quest that will be related to those characters. This limits worldbuilding and prevents the story to resonate a bit more.

There’s an on-going quest, for example, to rebuild a town, which serves as the game’s main hub. But you rarely feel the impact of rebuilding it: narratively, it rarely opens new quests, while the visuals remain largely the same, and the flowers and buildings you plant and build, which should have helped you get some items, are actually pretty useless if you were already exploring the town – and with the help of the triple jump – collecting everything. Lastly, the music doesn’t even evolve with each upgrade, which is a shame.

The soundtrack in Will of the Wisps is great, building an eerie atmosphere that perfectly matches the overall art style and the sadness of some scenes – there are no upbeat tunes to be found here – but it also overuses the main melody of the first game a lot, making each area sound a bit the same.

The game puts a lot of focus on combat. You attack with a kind of sword of light that hits hard and fast and you often find or buy new skills for Ori. The problem is that the enemy design is quite simple, which makes Ori’s abilities pretty useless. Early on, for example, you can buy a hammer that destroys shields, does a great deal of damage, stagger enemies, and has a pretty good range – which means that Ori doesn’t need any other thing to defeat any enemy. You also acquire a bow early on to hit distant foes, which means that you don’t need anything but the standard sword, the hammer and the bow – actually even the bow is superfluous if you use the bash ability. In other words, Will of the Wisps gives many skills and weapons to Ori but forgets to make most of them useful.

The level design, on the other hand, is stellar. To encourage players to explore and come back to previous areas to try new abilities, the game makes those abilities help a lot in traverse those same environments, which are built to offer a good challenge the first time through, but be a breeze when you come back – with grapple points that function as shortcuts, for example. Metroidvanias often make the mistake of turning abilities into glorified keys, but Will of the Wisps actually makes them fun to play with and rewarding to do so.  The game also opens up during its middle portion, and you can choose to explore four different regions in any order, with the ability you find in one helping explore the others.

There are also various kinds of collectibles – and they’re all are useful in some way or another. Some increase your energy or health, some are required to upgrade the hub town, and some are shards that act as difficulty modifiers: equipping them can give you more health or an extra jump, making the game easier, or make the enemies hit harder and have more health, but offering more rewards if defeated.

The environments, meanwhile, are breathtaking – “you may want to take a screenshot and use it as a wallpaper” kind of breathtaking. There’s a bit of excess to the amount of stuff on the screen, which is divided into various layers, passing a great sense of depth – the game would have looked even more amazing in 3D – but the overall aesthetic certainly makes an impression. Sometimes, though, there’s too much going on: early on, when you attack with a torch, the particle effects obscure the enemy, so you lose track of them after hitting them, which may get you hit in return.

And it’s a nice touch the fact that the bosses usually appear in one of the deeper layers before coming right at Ori, which makes them more menacing and imposing. Another nice touch was making a certain boss destroy another – which further reinforces how dangerous the victor is.

Finally, the platforming is great, but only because it was already great in the first game. Again, you have the bash ability that transforms enemies and projectiles into moveable trampolines while redirecting them, which changes how the player approaches them: enemies are not just obstacles to be destroyed or avoided anymore, but tools to reach new platforms. Will of the Wisps, however, doesn’t do anything new with the ability, happy to just use the same old tricks.

Ori and the Will of the Wisps will certainly feel familiar – perhaps too familiar – to those that played the first one, but it’s still a great game in its own right. With more interesting quests and characters, the next game will certainly be something to behold.

February 09, 2021.