Aesthetics of Ori and the Blind Forest

Introduction

Ori and the Blind Forest (referred to as “Ori” in this essay) is a Metroidvania action platformer which tells the journey of an orphan named Ori, who started a heroic journey to reform his forest to its former glory. The game tells a deeply emotional story with its stunning visuals, orchestral music, and meaningful interactions. All of the elements add to each other coherently and produce exceptionally strong aesthetics. This essay discusses the aesthetics of the game by referencing both Davison’s (2017) aesthetics lecture and the eight aesthetics presented in the famous MDA framework (Hunicke, LeBlanc & Zubek, 2004). This essay assumes that the audience has played Ori.

Flow

Metroidvania is not a genre for everyone because of its difficulty, but Ori is designed to keep the difficulty perfectly lined up with players abilities so they can always stay in the flow channel. Right after the tutorial level where the players familiarize themselves with basic controls, the game starts cycles of learning new abilities → practice new abilities with platforming → solve puzzles with new abilities → face tough challenges and intense combats with new abilities. So after each ability is introduced, there are some levels designed for the player to practice and master that ability. When the next ability is introduced, the player is always ready to learn that ability and face new challenges. The same thing for abilities also applies to mechanics such as portals.

A perfect example is the Ginso Tree level. In that level, the player first learns double jump and practices it by moving around and collecting keys. Then, they learn how to bash. Bash is a core mechanic in Ori where the player bashes projectiles, lanterns, or enemies, pushing them to one direction and pushing themselves to the opposite direction. The game familiarizes players with this abilities with a level that requires them to bash a projectile through multiple portals until they can use that projectile to break an obstacle that is far away from where the projectile starts. After that, there is a huge exciting escape level, where the player constantly uses the bashing ability to get rid of the dangerous rising water. With the progression of levels, the game’s difficulty can line up with player’s ability.

New Poetics

One way Ori achieves high-level immersion is the music. All music in Ori are fully orchestrated and fits the theme perfectly, but more importantly is how the game uses them. The Ginso Tree escape level can also be used as an example here. In this level, the background music does not stop after the player dies, which is unusual but meaningful. When the player feels frustrated after failing, the epic music just keeps playing and tells the player: “Keep going, the game is not over yet.” It helps present the idea that death is an important part of Ori’s experience. There are other things that keep players immersed in this level, such as instant respawn.

Navigation in Ori’s world is smooth and makes players feel powerful. Unlike other platformers, Ori introduces double jump and wall jump at a very early stage. So that the player has the freedom to navigate to most places right from the beginning, although with some controls over the freedom in level design. But Ori does not stop with double jump - it gives players even more powerful movement such as triple jump, dash, and bash. Ori also gives players the power to choose their own save points, which gives them the freedom to choose how they navigate through levels, but at the same time make them responsible for their choices - making save points costs energy and some save points can make passing levels more difficult.

Interest Curves

Ori keeps its interest curve by exciting “boss fight”, challenging movements, and the learn → practice → test cycles for new abilities as mentioned before. What makes Ori’s interest curves exceptional is the unique designs:

1. The “boss fight” is not limited to its literal meaning. Delivering an object, escaping a place, escaping an enemy can all become challenging boss fights in Ori, which produces a variety to keep players interested.
2. Movements in Ori are more powerful than in most Metroidvania games as discussed in the last session. They are in different forms and are core to the game experience.
3. Each ability in Ori is interesting and the rich feedbacks make the abilities intrinsically fun to use, like bashing, gliding with fur, stomp, and charge jump.

Apart from these mechanics-heavy interest curves, Ori also keeps its high level of interest through its gorgeous hand-painted worlds, orchestral music, and a deep story about love, growth, and sacrifice.

Procedurality

In Ori, the main procedure is the various movement abilities. Some “behind-the-scenes” videos by Benson (2016) show that the mechanics of Ori’s movement is prototyped in an early stage of development, and levels laid out using squares and sphere are used to test the movement. It seems that the testing went well, so all levels in Ori are designed around different movement abilities, and functions as a primary method of delivering Ori’s rhetoric - love and sacrifice.

Levels of Interactivity

Pine (2009) categorizes interactivities into three levels: low, medium, and high. Ori presents all three levels with most interactivities at high level. Low level interactivities include navigating through static and safe platforms. Medium level interactivities includes normal combat with Ori’s companion and revealing the story. High level interactivities include combining different abilities to beat levels and forming their own way of playing the game.

More analysis based on the MDA framework

Ori also shows six out of eight aesthetics as discussed in the MDA framework. These aesthetics are:

1. Sensation: again, achieved by hand-painted world and orchestral music.
2. Fantasy: in the game player plays the role of Ori who starts a heroic journey to revitalize his forest. This is a compelling fantasy.
3. Narrative: Ori tells an emotional tale about love and sacrifice through the relationship between characters and the world supported by the mechanics.
4. Challenge: achieved by the cycles of learn → practice → test. At the end of each area, there is one level with a big challenge for the player, and finishing those levels is super rewarding, because the players know they have mastered all abilities learned in that area.
5. Discovery: achieved by discovering new areas, new abilities, new enemies, new objects, and revealing the story through interactions.
6. Expression: each player can have his own way of playing Ori. Similar to Bartle taxonomy of player types (Bartle, 1996), Ori’s player can be categorized by how they move and combat.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Ori presents exceptionally strong aesthetics through the coherent combination of stunning visuals, immersive music, interesting and powerful abilities, controlled freedom, and carefully designed levels.

References

Benson, J. (2016). Ori and the Blind Forest - Game Design Reel [Video]. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTksBJeoa1A

Bartle, R. (1996). Hearts, clubs, diamonds, spades: Players who suit MUDs. Journal of MUD research, 1(1), 19.

Davison, D. (2017). Aesthetics and Design [Lecture]. Retrieved from: http://fundamentals.etc.cmu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/aesthetics-design.pdf

Hunicke, R., LeBlanc, M., & Zubek, R. (2004, July). MDA: A formal approach to game design and game research. In Proceedings of the AAAI Workshop on Challenges in Game AI (Vol. 4, No. 1, p. 1722).

Pine, L. (2009). Levels of Interactivity. Retrieved from: https://mpm17fall2009friday.wordpress.com/2009/10/12/levels-of-interactivity/