Unfinished: Ori and the Will of the Wisps (02/26/20)

@brad I thought y'all said something in a podcast (like 3-5 years ago, in respond to an email) about using the term "Pathfinder" instead of "Metroidvania"

Man, the Hollow Knight hate is mind boggling... it is easily the best game I've played in the past 10 years from world-building and feeling like it was a creative, original thing. I hated the look of it originally, but it wasn't the twee-goth thing I thought it was going to be - it consumed me in a way I haven't experienced in forever. Hating it because you had to buy a map, just.... k.

I would love that, but I'm afraid it would just be one of those things where the people in the room with him will just keep talking about how bad it is and Brad will feel forced to agree. I've seen that happen a lot on this site.

I've always thought Giant Bomb's hate on Hollow Knight is absolutely insane. The one thing they keep going back to is the map system. I loved the feeling of danger and tension that brought when I was deep in unmapped territory.

I like 311

I only played five hours of Hollow Knight because why should I play a game for that long not to have access to something like the maps? I found the game hard, inscrutable, and often quite boring, and I have plenty of other things on my plate. But I only get told that I didn't play it long enough or right enough or something like that from Hollow Knight partisans. The game was a chore for me, and I love Metroidvanias.

Game looks good, but not enough 311 commentary guys

Glad to hear there's no Souls-like death mechanic. Easily the worst part about Hollow Knight. It added absolutely nothing to the experience; would have much preferred a straight-up retry screen, especially for the harder bosses.

I love being ham strung by choices in video games why have passive abilities when you can force a person to open a menu and remove another useful skill. So much convenience.

Jesus Harold Christ the GB crew were not kidding when they said the subset of people out there who like Hollow Knight, *really fucking love Hollow Knight*.

Y'all do y'all, though, I guess.

@steveurkel:

I like having to pick a few passives over carrying all passives with you. In games where all the passives affect you, you get a +3% damage here and a +5% armor there but because you never have to make choices or unequip, the impact of the passives don't really show themselves all that well. Yeah i guess all those +3% eventually are quite impactful, but buying a new weapon is probably the real noticeable bump in attack power.

When the game designers know that the player has a limited amount of passives to carry along, they can make every passive powerful enough to immediatly have an impact on your playstyle. Even acquiring an extra slot is quite a significant jump in power, given that the passives to choose from are stronger in a game with a limitation on passives . +25% damage. A higher jump. Getting more currency for kills. Arrows split into 4 smaller arrows. I want these kind of passives. I don't care about all those +3%.

I'd rather choose a few high impact passives than gathering a bunch of weaker passives.

Graphics look terrible but at least the action is good. lol

Hollow Knight's problem is that it feels uninteresting until you get to the City of Tears. Also this is a hollow knight.

@topcyclist: that's fine. The problem is they extrapolate their issues with the first moments to it's entirety and pass it off as an enlightened take.

@bludgeonparagon: how DARE you..

Jeff trying really hard not to like it :P.

The fact still remains that at the turn of the current generation the game catalogues were lousy with very good metroidvanias, and I'm not sure that even 5 years distance from that would really elevate Jeff's opinion above "mildly seems like a pretty good time".

Personally I'm super psyched to play another really (really) good One of Those since I loved the simple elegance of the first Ori's game design toe-to-tip, but I'm not surprised that Jeff isn't head over heels looking forward to it

Anyone know whether this game, on the Xbox One X, will be in 4k and utilize HDR? From what I understand, the developers intentionally took aspects from other games, like Hollow Knight, to make their game better. I'm not sure if they ever said Hollow Knight specifically, but similar games that came out since the first game. I should probably go back to Hollow Knight. I liked it and played quite a lot of it, but I lost interest in the type of game and moved onto something else. This was relatively recent. That said, the muted color palette compared to a game like Ori doesn't quite appeal to me as much. I mean, I did like it as it adds to the atmosphere, but after a while it makes me seek something more vibrant like Ori. In March alone, there are so many new games to play.

I hope HK: SilkSong just removes the map completely to fuck with GB

I'll never understand the completely unwarranted shade the crew constantly throws at Hollow Knight. It's metroidvania perfection, the map is the only thing I can think of to knock against it, and even that's fine if you have 2 brain cells kickin' around.

It's especially strange when they seemed to enjoy Dead Cells and Bloodstained, which are both great games, but not nearly as much of an impressive feat as Hollow Knight.

Ori 1 was a pretty game that sounded good and played really well, that I enjoyed playing a lot, yet had zero passion for coming away from it.

Looking at this, I'm starting to maybe dial in why it was that way for me. Just not actually vibing with the games' sense of beauty, visually or music-wise. Either way I bet I'd still enjoy it all the same if I played it.

Brad, play Hollow Knight, its incredible. Dont listen to them!

You guys can keep talking about Hollow Knight, I won't get mad ^^

Really looking forward to this new game! Just got through the first game a few months ago, was satisfied by the end of the game and it whet my appetite for this sequel!

I'm glad people loved Hollow Knight, because I really want them to make another one. That being said, I bounced off that game so hard because of the map mechanic. It just made it unplayable for me.

The irony with the whole Hollow Knight map situation is that Hollow Knight shows you more of the map the the typical Metroidvania since you are literally buying half of it for each area, only side paths aren't filled in. Once you buy the map you can pretty clearly see which area has a boss icon and plan your route. The only difference is that you need to sit at one of the hundreds of benches to fill in your map progress.

This looks sick tbh

There seems to be a lot more focus/emphasis on the combat in the sequel, and that's made me hesitant. As much as OatBF is rightly considered a metroidvania, it's still a platformer at heart. I hope that characteristic doesn't get lost in the mix for OatWotW.

Just watched this and came on here to defend Hollow Knight only to find that everyone and their mother had already done that for me. :-P Jeff and Ben are definitely in the minority if they didn't like that game. It's friggin' amazing. Best metroidvania I'd played in years.

I own the first Ori on Steam but only played for an hour or two, years ago, just had other things going on. I need to get back to that one, then maybe get into this one if I like it well enough.

I'm with Ben and Jeff on Hollow Knight, fuck that game.

@sgtblumpkin: I dont understand it. Maybe like 2% of total play time is without a map, and its exciting

@lonelyspacepanda: I do kind of feel the same. I was hoping they would take this in a different direction - the environments etc. look too similar.

I have seriously got to get around to playing the Ori games, this one looks so damn good.