‘Ori and the Will of the Wisps’ developer says players ‘can expect to cry again’

Ori and the Blind Forest enchanted gamers back in 2015 with its beautiful art, touching story, and satisfyingly fluid platforming gameplay. The game sequel Ori and the Will of the Wisps is now due to arrive on Xbox One and PC March 11, returning players to the forest once again to guide Guardian Spirit Ori through a new adventure.

Speaking via email, Mashable asked Moon Studios’ executive producer Daniel Smith about what to expect from Will of the Wisps, differences in mechanics to Blind Forest, and what they’re hoping this sequel will achieve.

What can you tell us about the story of Ori and the Will of the Wisps?

Well, you can probably expect to cry again. The story within the first game had a lot of moments of joy and a lot of moments of sadness. I feel like this had an impact on the Metroidvania genre all up. I don’t believe we’ve really seen a Metroidvania game, before Blind Forest, that had such an emotional impact on people, and more importantly in people who related to specific characters.

We did all of this with only four characters in Blind Forest, which is crazy. The sequel was a huge opportunity for us to go deeper and bigger and Ori and the Will of the Wisps offers just that. It was a pillar of ours to make the story as emotionally impactful, if not more so, to everybody who played Blind Forest. 

We simply loved people writing about how they related to specific characters, or moments, in Blind Forest. We had a lot of people reaching out to tell us about how they lost a loved one and found solace with the game and the characters. I think we’ll get some of that in Will of the Wisps, and I think that’s exciting. 

Will people who haven’t played Blind Forest still be able to follow Wisps?

The story is a pure continuation from Blind Forest; at the end of Blind Forest there’s an egg, at the beginning of Will of the Wisps the egg hatches. For fans who completed Blind Forest, they’ll notice that there’s a very clear continuation of the storyline.

That said, there’s more or less a reason why we didn’t call the sequel Ori 2; we also want this to be a fresh approach for anyone who’s new to the franchise. We want them to pick up Ori and the Will of the Wisps and get going right off. We want it feel like a fresh game that they don’t need to have all this reference or law from the first game to play.

In Ori and the Blind Forest, Ori was on a quest to save the forest. Do you consider the series, and Wisps specifically, to have an environmental theme or message? 

Absolutely, I will say that Ori is on another journey to liberate a forest that’s suffering from corruption but more than that Ori, this time around, is on a journey to find his own self-destiny.

Is the character of Ori the same as he was in Blind Forest, or has he changed or grown up a bit?

Ori’s definitely grown up! In many ways you start out the game where he has, more or less, forgotten about some of his superpower abilities; it’s been a while. Ultimately, it doesn’t take long for you to feel like you’re completely powerful and are a more grown up version of Ori.

Will Sein or any of the other characters from Forest be returning?

No, sadly Sein will not be returning. At the end of Blind Forest, you have the Spirit Tree that gets healed by replacing Sein back up into this tree, and that heart of the Spirit Tree Sein was, actually, a part of Ori’s combat mechanic. The issue there is like we don’t really want to start a sequel out with, “Hey, we ripped Sein back out of the tree and now you’ve got Sein again.”

It looks as though there’s more of a focus on combat this time around. Why the shift?

When we were going through concept phases and dreaming big and wondering what we could do to improve on Ori, in every aspect, combat was one of them. We really listened to our community very deeply and one of the lines of commentary we say from Blind Forest is that people felt like the combat was relatively basic. We wanted to really bring combat to the forefront and we started to explore ways we could do that and landed on a melee, a combat system with projectiles that uses precision instead of just mashing the X button.

The other reason we chose to shift the combat is the overall continuity of the storyline. At the end of Blind Forest you put Sein up in the tree and it heals the Spirit Tree — we didn’t want to start the sequel with Ori ripping Sein back out of the tree. Developing Ori further and expanding on ways we could improve it, in the combat system, actually helped the storyline itself.

Blind Forest had a fairly unique saving system. Why did you decide to get rid of it for Wisps?

In Blind Forest we offered something called Soul Link, where you have to spend energy to place down somewhat of a blue bonfire, and if you died you would you respawn there. The issue with this system was both new and very experienced players, shared some level of frustration if they forgot to put down a Soul Link and progressed very, very far and then died and went all the way back.

So, in Ori and the Will of the Wisps we wanted to improve on that system just by having the game checkpoint very, very often, and it has, essentially, just eliminated any frustration around that. 

Also, we’re including so many new things into the world of Ori; there’s weapons, there’s a number of abilities, there’s all kinds of things that Ori can use throughout combat and traversal that we didn’t actually want to take up another face button for Soul Link. 

So, technically, by creating automatic checkpoint system we freed up a button, and the trade-off has been a huge benefit, you’re definitely gaining more than you’re losing, for that matter.

Were you apprehensive about going back to do a sequel, or concerned about making the game fresh and exciting while retaining what people loved about Blind Forest?

Yes and no. The number one focus for the team going into the sequel is that we really want to carry the spirit of Ori and the Blind Forest, and everything that made it great, into the new game. As we added a lot of new features to the sequel, we wanted to make sure it felt cohesive, so players felt that all of those new features always belonged in Ori and the Blind Forest.

We want fans, who are die-hards of Blind Forest, to pick up Will of the Wisps and immediately feel like, “Ah, I’m home,” while at the same time, anybody who is new to the drama, have it feel fresh and exciting.

Did Blind Forest teach you anything that you’ll be applying to Will of the Wisps?

Well, the first thing is that we wanted to just offer players more; I think a lot of people beat Blind Forest in somewhat around eight hours, and the general sentiment was, “Oh my gosh, I loved the game. I wish it were longer,” you know, “please make more Ori.” So, that’s the very first thing we looked at, “How do we make the game bigger?” and that’s not just in terms of scale, it’s in terms of scope. 

So, I think we’ve taken a lot of inspiration from games we loved in our generation as kids, and even now, and we’ve added quite a bit of depth into Ori. So, that is one of the biggest things that we were looking at.

Where do you see Ori going in the future, both the character and the franchise?

We love the fact that there’s desire for more Ori, it’s just something we can’t answer right now; we would love to, but that answer will be reserved for a later date.