Why You Should Be a Bit Disappointed With Ori and the Blind Forest

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

I would probably be a bit disappointed if I was as familiar with these indie platformers as some people. But I hardly play them. Honestly, I bought it because I thought that esthetically it looked better than any game that I have ever seen in my life. And I wasn't disappointed by the gameplay either, being unfamiliar with metroidvania type of games. It comes down to taste refinement. When I was younger I could read any book, watch any movie or any TV show and play any game without noticing the flaws. As I accumulated more experience in those areas I became harder to please. I demanded better quality from all of those sources of entertainment. Ori and the Blind Forest provided me with something that was fresh TO ME, even though the formula is an old one.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Metroidvania is basically just what it's called that the game does, platforming, rpg-esque, revisiting old areas to get to areas you couldn't reach before without upgrades, etc. Metroid and Castlevania are just basically the most well-known game series that did this well and it's just sorta merged into its own notifier nowadays.

It's a bit silly though, isn't it? Psychonauts and Oddworld do this but aren't called "Metroidvanias". Everyone knows what a platformer is, so let's just call it that.

I think a part of the article was hinting at why have the intro at all? The game itself already gives off a melancholy atmosphere, you don't need dead parents being killed in front of you to get that feeling, the artstyle and music already does this. Overall though, it's a bit of a tiredness of the same stuff with a new splash of paint getting as popular as they are when there's other games that do something not as over-saturated as this particular set is in the indie market. But I could very possibly be reading this completely wrong.

How do you know the parent died? I saw him fall down and assumed he was unconscious or something. But I forgot all about it once the game started so the ending didn't bother me.

 

[Quellist]

Ok i'm sick of this. Yahtzee, stop getting butthurt when people don't agree with you. If people like something that you don't DEAL WITH IT! You're a critic, give your opinion then move on.

 

[snave]

Nah, I felt the same way.

But I like the game. For very good gameplay. It's nothing new, but it is a very good ... and hard ... Metroidvania. And I love Metroidvania.
Story is forgettable though, that is true. And the artstyle kind of bites itself with the difficulty. Like "look how cute we are, it is a real fun kids story NOW DIE A THOUSAND DEATHS IN SPIKES".

Totally. I found the Bash move to be an interesting spin on the usual array of powerups in an item-gated platformer that really made the core gameplay feel fresh. And the final dungeon felt suitably imposing, even if my amassed powers had dropped the difficulty a touch. How difficult the game was though seemed to hinge very heavily on how soon you maxed out the Utility tree with the triple jump and half damage perks.

What I really respect is that the clipping layer was absolutely perfectly identical (bugs aside) to the art layer. Most hand drawn games suffer from imprecision in this regard but Ori does not.

 

[Kahani]

the visuals look absolutely amazing

I think this is the main part that bugs me about the praise this sort of indie game tends to get. We're constantly told that graphics aren't everything and that the push for higher resolutions and extra graphicy features is a large part of what is ruining AAA gaming. But then exactly the same people point at "arty" indie games as the height of awesomeness, when the vast majority of the time they're just incredibly generic formula-following platformers and/or puzzle games that happen to look a bit pretty. Sure, visual design isn't the same as graphical fidelity and you can generally run these games without needing a brand new supercomputer, but it still comes down to the same thing - the pretty looks are all that's needed to forgive the bland mediocrity of the rest of the game.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't enjoy or play this sort of game; if you like generic platformers that look pretty, knock yourself out. Certainly I enjoy plenty of games that aren't exactly original. But it would be nice to have a bit of consistency. If you praise games like Ori for being a generic platformer that looks pretty, you have absolutely no right to complain about the latest Call of Battlefield being a generic shooter that has better graphics than the last one. It's all just enjoying pretty visuals and familiar gameplay, it's just that different people have different taste in exactly what gameplay and what kinds of prettiness they prefer.

Obviously this is a general rant, not aimed at this post in particular. In fact, I don't consider it shallow at all to want to play a game because it looks good. If anything, that's exactly the problem - we keep being told that enjoying a game just because it looks awesome is a bad thing, which is ridiculous since games are a largely visual medium. It's just the hypocrisy from some people that bugs me - if games like Ori deserve praise for looking good, you can't turn around and complain that liking games for their looks is shallow.

I'm probably in a very small minority here, but finding out how Ori ends actually made me more likely to play it. There seems to be a large part of the gaming audience that basically despises joy. They make much ado about games like The Witcher, Bloodborne, TLoU, Spec Ops, ect., games that mire you neck deep in grime then stand on your head. The ideal seems to be as much darkness and despair as possible, a minimum of likable or heroic charterers, and the light at the end of the tunnel being reachable only from the top of a pile of innocent bodies.

It's not about despising joy, but about how that joy is presented and actually fits into the game. As Yahtzee explicitly noted, the problem with the ending wasn't that it was happy, but that it completely negated any sense of progression in the story and really had nothing to do with the game at all - the character you just played all the way through did absolutely nothing, ending up hiding behind its mother in exactly the same way as at the start while she deus-ex-machina-ed the happy ending into being. Happy endings work if they're a logical conclusion to the story. See literally every Disney film, for example. You'll struggle to find one that doesn't either start off with the mother already dead, evil, or getting murdered on screen in the first few minutes, but no-one complains that they have happy endings because those endings make narrative sense - the protagonist grows throughout the story and eventually takes action that directly results in said happiness, usually involving defeating a villain or overcome some other obstacle (see Finding Nemo for a good example of one in which no-one actually dies other than the mother and in which there isn't any real villain at all, yet which still follows almost exactly the same character arc). What they don't do is follow the protagonist for most of the film, then kick them to the side and have the dead mother suddenly show up again and save the day. Again as Yahtzee said, having the hero fail to overcome the big obstacle and end up in the exactly the same position as before the story began just isn't an interesting character arc.

You criticise games like The Witcher, but that actually does exactly the same. I've not played the first, but look at the plot of the second game. Geralt starts off falsely accused of murdering his king (who, breaking the trope a bit, actually isn't his mother). The story then follows him escaping to track down the real murderer, making friends, completing intermediate tasks, and eventually comes to the big reveal and climactic fight in which the true villain is exposed and defeated. He then rides off into the sunset with his friends in order to confront the sequel hook. Sure, the world tends rather to the grimdark side of things, but the plot is ultimately the same as a Disney film, complete with happy ending. The overall arc of Ori and The Witcher aren't actually that different, it's just that the end of Ori would be as if the king suddenly showed up at the end to reveal he hadn't been murdered after all, forgave Letho for trying to kill him, and then everyone had cake. If people complained about that it wouldn't be simply because it was happy, but because it doesn't make the slightest bit of sense compared to the game so far, and completely negates everything the player has done up to that point.

It's a bit silly though, isn't it? Psychonauts and Oddworld do this but aren't called "Metroidvanias". Everyone knows what a platformer is, so let's just call it that.

You've been here since 2011 and have never seen the term "Metroidvania" before? Weird. It's a well enough known term to have it's own Wiki page [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metroidvania]. The point is that Metroidvania is a subset of platformers, and more specific descriptions can often be more useful than general ones. Ori is a platformer, yes. Is it particularly similar to Sonic or Super Meat Boy? No. Ori is a Metroidvania-style platformer, those are different types of platformer. It's exactly the same as calling a Land Rover an off-roader and a Bugatti Veyron a supercar; yes, they're both cars, but in many situations it's a lot more meaningful to refer to them with different, more specific terms.

 

[Scow2]

I think the game did drop the ball in the story department, as things go. I forgot all about the bear thing after meeting the Spirit Tree, and bringing it back did feel like a cop-out... sort of. It also stank of Glurge. Especially since it's likely that last egg is nonviable. Ori gets his parents back... but Gomu's entire species is still wiped out, Koru's children are still dead, and now Koru is dead as well. Oh yeah... and the tree that started the plot by murdering Koru's children is back again as well.

 

[Coruptin]

ITT: People who don't read past the title

 

[shrekfan246]

Pft, I don't deny that the aesthetic of this game is everything to me. And I Don't care. It was masterfully laid over a competent platformer.

And sometimes, that's enough in a world of clunky animations in 3D shooters and First person adventures. Something that connects together so neatly and seamlessly as you play as to feel like a dream.

Yeah, this right here. Since I started playing it, I've qualified my opinion on Ori with "it doesn't really do anything new and there are a lot of little problems that will probably bug other people, but it's so pretty and smooth that I just don't care." Considering how few games actually do that for me (I think The Witcher 2 and Transistor are incredibly beautiful games as well, but I've yet to actually beat either of them), I still consider it a point in Ori's favor. Admittedly, I don't get as invested in the narrative side of video games as Yahtzee does.

 

[proghead]

I was looking forward to this game but watching some gameplay videos have put me off it. I expected something along the lines of World of Illusion on the Genesis / Mega Drive, but it seems to be more of a very pretty Super Meat Boy, which I never liked. Guess I'm not hardcore enough.

 

[Xharlie]

Thank you, Yahtzee, for the warning! I am really disappointed to read about the ending. I had very high hopes for this game.

Personally, resurrection-and-reversal endings like this make me furious. They do not merely leave me indifferent. Any author that writes an emotionally taxing story has an obligation to the audience and simply dropping them, saying "none of it actually mattered, anyway" is irresponsible and not acceptable, in my opinion. Also, while flashy particle effects, great graphics and fun game-play are all good things, if the game is story-rich, the story's impact far outweighs them.

The logical solution is simple: if you can't write a satisfying story, don't write one at all. Mario is a perfect example - the princess is always in another castle and that's great because getting to the next one is the fun part.

I play games for fun and being mad about the ending isn't.

 

[Seneschal]

Agreed. Once the game turned out to be 10 hours of (admittedly pretty) metroidvania bookended by half a page of narrative, I lost interest. The trailers promised something meaningful. I don't have it in me to play games for mechanical diversion anymore.

 

[Vahir]

Reading this piece, what really came to mind for me was Fire Emblem: Awakening, for the 3DS. I've played every game in the series released in the west, and then some, and I still found it to be the worst yet, for the simple reason that

Spoiler

Chrom doesn't actually die at the end, or Basilios, or anybody else, damnit,

completely ruining the story that I had invested in up until then. If there aren't any consequences, and everything ends happily ever after, then there was no point in everything up until then.

 

[Thanatos2k]

I think Yahztee is going to have to eventually accept that people LIKE the "indie game formula" he decries.

He's not saying that it's a bad formula, he's saying it's an overdone formula. He even said that he could have gotten on board with it for this game if they went beyond just using the formula.

I haven't played the game, but despite the criticism I still kind of want to. Call it shallow, but the visuals look absolutely amazing, and I can drudge through an otherwise mediocre games for those

Conversely, I think Yahtzee is going to have to accept that people don't CARE about overdone formulas that they like.

If you were describing a JRPG to me and said "It's just like the others!" I would say "Oh thank god" and want to play it more.

Metroidvania is basically just what it's called that the game does, platforming, rpg-esque, revisiting old areas to get to areas you couldn't reach before without upgrades, etc. Metroid and Castlevania are just basically the most well-known game series that did this well and it's just sorta merged into its own notifier nowadays.

It's a bit silly though, isn't it? Psychonauts and Oddworld do this but aren't called "Metroidvanias". Everyone knows what a platformer is, so let's just call it that.

A Metroidvania game is one that shares similarities with Super Metroid and/or Symphony of the Night. Namely that you start with few abilities in a small area, but by finding stuff and getting more at your own pace gradually expand your ability to explore the world and find more stuff. They're also non-linear.

 

[tzimize]

From a story-telling standpoint I agree with you Mr. Croshaw.

The thing is, I found the rest of the game so very much fun I just forgot about the story for the most of it. Its a typical "gamy" game. Its about jumping and movement and...."gamy" things. And it did them very, very well, while looking absolutely spectacular.

While I could agree that if a game has story, it might as well be good....its just not that important in all stories, and I think convincing us to be disappointed with Ori for a lackluster story is a bit harsh, when considering the game is not really ABOUT the story....its about jumping and looking at the fantastic scenery

 

[ZetzDarke]

Sounds pretty gimicky to me. If you set a story up with a death then you damn well keep that death. I remember when Ni Nu Kuni hit that point in the story when you realize the whole resurrecting mom thing isn't going to happen. As saccharin as that game could get sometimes, it knew what you needed for a coming of age story.

 

[SlothfulCobra]

The formula still "works" because there are still stragglers who haven't been over-exposed to the whole thing. Yahtzee just suffers from having to play every single game until the whole thing becomes old hat.

If he wants something new and different, he should try playing something like LISA: The Painful RPG. That's about as far from the formula of something tragic happening to the innocent as you can get. Not sure if it has the same sort of mass appeal though.

 

[arigomi]

Following a formula works but it can make a game very disposable. It is easily consumed due to the familiarity and quickly forgotten.

 

[Mike Fang]

I have to agree with a lot of the points Yahtzee made here. From his description, it sounds like the story could have worked, if there'd actually been a significant character arc resulting in character growth. I also like how he addressed the emotional manipulation point. I personally dislike the "crying puppy" form of heartstring yanking; partly because yes, it's effective, too much so in my opinion. I also don't like it because it makes me feel arbitrarily sad; I feel bad because its the image and concept of something innocent and fragile being hurt. I've done nothing to warrant being made to feel this way, and life makes us feel sadness and guilt in enough ways for our actual mistakes and misdeeds, we don't really need to be emotionally gut-punched like that so thoughtlessly. If we feel bad for a character's plight because of personal investment or self-identification, that has poignancy to it. Having someone shove the equivalent of a picture of a 3 legged kitten in our faces is just bumming us out with depressing thoughts.

Still, I guess sometimes there are few options for getting around such tactics when you need to get the audience in the right mindset. That said, I'm once again going to come down on Yahtzee's side and say the ending sounds like a cop out and like everything the player and protagonist just went through is rendered moot. I personally wouldn't have an issue with the mother-being-brought-back-to-life part,so long as the protagonist showed some maturation as well. From the description, I think having the mother be the one to provide the ultimate resolution was the real sticking point. If the protagonist had, say, had a heartfelt reunion with their mother, then showed their mother how much they'd grown up by being the one to resolve the world crisis, -that- would have been touching. As it is, it sounds rather like the protagonist struggles and endures for nothing more than to fall back on old habits.

 

[loa]

Formulaic, he said. Hah.
Call me shallow but big budget, well crafted and polished games with distinctly non-human main characters are super rare.
I can only think of spyro and okami and I go out of my way to seek that stuff out.
Looking at my xbox 360 game collection, I see exactly 0 games in which you control an animal or a dragon or non-humanoid monster with no human middleman riding the thing or somesuch.

Yes the story is unfortunately full of holes, poorly executed and shat the bed early by de-personalizing it with generic light vs dark dreck but calling ori a drop in the ocean of sameyness is just disingenious.
There's a reason people reacted positively to it. Because it's something you actually don't see very often nowadays.

There is no one with high budget and experience out there attempting to make a secret of nimh.
But now, if this is successful, if it sends the signal to devs that it's okay to do this, maybe there will be.

 

[TomWiley]

Personally, I'm of the opinion that it's perfectly alright to love a game love a game with stunning hand-painted backgrounds and a beautiful soundtrack for its style and style alone. It doesn't make you pretentious. It doesn't mean that the gaming community as a whole is shallow. It just means that someone made a gorgeous, adorable, solid platformer which is easy to like and surprisingly addictive, and it is in fact, a good thing.