Ori & the Will of the Wisps is basically video game chicken soup
Yesterday I picked up the old controller in hopes that a spot of gaming might settle my nerves. Movies seem like a non-starter, at the moment, and I can barely get all the way past most YouTube videos. I took the Bulls down to Atlanta in NBA 2K20, started things positively, only for the Hawks to open up a 20-point lead on a series of open 3s. I tried marching Juventus across Europe, in a quasi-Champions League campaign in PES eFootball 2020; but was quickly driven to fury by that game engine’s fetish for impossibly long passes. I can’t play Gears V, ‘cause that title’s alien usurpers look a lot like … viruses. So I fired up ‘Ori & the Will of the Wisps’ after an hour of cursing at my television, and having promised myself I’d write you all about this quirky little platformer.
Ori is a rather innocent little spirit made of white light, who must embark on a fairly perilous mission to locate his best friend: a magical breed of owl whose newfound power of flight has sent them far from home, and crashing different ways across a forest filled with wonders and dangers. You will do deals with mages who happen to be talking animals themselves, for crystals and orbs that unlock new abilities and also passage-ways to different corners of a lush and deceptive world. One of those mages tells Ori he is ‘not like the others’, filled, even, with an ancient light, which is the nicest thing’s anyone’s said to me all year.
I downloaded Will of the Wisps, with my last free month of a Game Pass subscription, because Microsoft have dedicated quite a stack of marketing dollars to making everyone aware of its existence. A franchise like Ori - this is a sequel to a debut entitled ‘The Blind Forest’ - is the sort of product a console-maker like Microsoft wants to tout as a flagship release. Back in the day, Sega and Nintendo respectively would either update or revolutionise adventures featuring Sonic and Super Mario - Sony tried the trick for a while with Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon, and a time-sweeping cat called ‘Blinx’ crashed and burned earnestly with the original Xbox. These sorts of games used to lead new machines to market, and when they looked like Ori does (puzzly, colourful, falsely linear) they helped endear that hardware to Japanese audiences.
At the moment Microsoft just wants franchises, period, to hold up against a slew of knockouts (God of War, Spider-Man, The Last of Us) available exclusively on PlayStation. Will of the Wisps feels like if I’d stayed up last night I might have been done with it within five or six hours, but that’s a doff of the hat to its playability. It’s gorgeous to look at, despite prancing somewhere between the second and third dimensions; you’ll be roaming around some place, only to slip through a vine and find yourself washed in either dawn or sunset, by way of a gentle crack in all the leaves. The game’s sound design emphasises Ori’s cuteness, with a diverse collection of pitter-patters, and that of most of the eccentric creatures you have to shimmer out of your way. The thing that surprises you most is how Ori’s world isn’t actually all that linear (I’m looking at you, Sonic, Crash …) Ori’s left-and-right navigation is wholly capable of leading you round in circles, because one crevice or other is capable of opening up rabbit holes that serve only singular purposes. Identifying what you need to explore them for is key to making swift progress, or else you’ll find yourself needlessly repeating battle sequences.
That’s frustrating, in and of itself. But I enjoyed calling a big bad wolf, so lavishly illustrated, a ‘lil beesh’ as he slipped into the forest’s depths; and I like that Ori & the Will of the Wisps doesn’t ask much more than I’m willing to give currently, in time, effort and concentration. To think, an adrenaline junkie like me is meant to be playing Doom Eternal right now…
‘Ori and the Will of the Wisps’ is ready to download on Xbox Game Pass.
