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James and Alec discuss their playthroughs of Ori and the Blind Forest!
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James and Alec discuss their playthroughs of Ori and the Blind Forest!
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James and Alec discuss their playthroughs of Ori and the Blind Forest!
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The transcription is a conversation between two individuals discussing their experience playing the game "Ori and the Blind Forest". They talk about the difficulty of the game, the graphics and artwork, the saving mechanics, and their overall impressions. One of the individuals mentions their dislike for the voice acting and subtitles in the game. I can't type, do-do-do-do-do-do, energy up, energy up. I also noticed, in pretty much every one of our episodes so far, we get into this little banter bit, and our energy is like where it needs to be, and then we realize that we have to read something, and then we completely backtrack, and then it takes us a good like 20 minutes to get back to this level that we're at right now. Okay, I feel, well, I think also a lot of these days, like I've been tired, or like just waking up, or my day didn't go the way I planned, so I feel pretty good right now, and I'll try to keep the energy up. This new microphone, how can I not, dude, with it blinking in my face all the time, and me accidentally hitting my lips on it? Three, two, one, dockload. Or maybe I just have that thing where caffeine makes me tired, and I'm just slowly taking away my own energy, and I don't know it. I'm just sapping my life force. Maybe. Do you want to? Do you want to? Welcome back to 321 Backlog, the podcast where we play and discuss games from our video game backlog. My name is Alec, and I'm joined, as always, by my good friend James. Hello, guys. How's it going? Beautiful day out today. Ready to talk about a terrible game. We're getting so good at this. Today, we're talking about Ori and the ... Was it Ori and the Blind Forest? I should probably know this. Yeah. Today, we're talking about Ori and the Blind Forest, Definitive Edition. The forest of Nibel is dying. After a powerful storm sets a series of devastating events in motion, Ori must journey to find courage and confront a dark nemesis to save the forest of Nibel. Ori and the Blind Forest tells the tale of a young orphan destined for heroics through visually stunning action platformer crafted by Moon Studios, featuring hand-painted artwork, meticulously animated character performance, a fully orchestrated score, and dozens of new features in the Definitive Edition. Ori and the Blind Forest explores a deeply emotional story about love and sacrifice and the hope that exists in all of us. We're not going to play that Poverty Edition here. No. So, originally released in 2015, and then subsequently, the Definitive Edition was released in 2016. Both editions carry a Metacritic score of 88. So, apparently somebody liked this game, Alec. You know, and it wasn't me. We'll get into that. I'm sorry. No, you know, you and I both, I think, in maybe varying degrees of intensity, we've both got a lot going on. Yeah. You know, a new kid at the house for me and traveling across multiple state lines, sitting down to play a game. Like you need a Steam Deck. Especially, you know, I might. Trying to play two games because we pick two at a time and then we'll try to get both of them done. That gets rough, right? Yeah. Yep. So, I think that kind of really influenced my play through of this game. And also of Bioshock. I think I had a little bit better of a time with Bioshock and we can talk about that during that episode. But this one was a lot of outside influence and the game itself, even though I had it on easy mode, the platforming was really hard for me. How did it do for you? I didn't die once. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Okay. It's tough, man. I know I'm not good at games, but man, I was kind of surprised just how bad I guess I am. I don't know. I did, I finished the game, but it took a lot and I think enjoying it a lot helped, though. I really did like, and I think platformers might be like one of my top genres as far as enjoyment. So, that helped. Yeah, I'm actually looking right now to see how much gameplay I actually got into it. Oh, that shouldn't be too. I have that, so I, go ahead. I got, you had eight hours, roughly. That's not right. That can't be it. Well, unless you were logged on and, or not live. Oh, there was a time where I think I was playing it offline, so. Oh, okay. I have a total of 108 minutes, and that's how long it took me. The old college try. That's how long it took me to realize that one, I am not good at this. This game was too hard for me, and if you're gonna try and sit down and play a game for a podcast, you need to really not have a bunch of outside distractions because my goodness, this felt like work and it was so hard to do. And I think it, and also, I think it does the game a disservice because I wanted to like it so much, I just think I had too much going on, and I really couldn't put it forward. So, I don't think I'm gonna strike it off of my backlog, but for now, I think I'm okay. Stay tuned for part two, guys. So, yeah, what, this was your selection, right? Yeah, it was. I had it, I think when we, I first bought like an Xbox, we put it on there because we got Game Pass and I played it for like five minutes or something. I got through the prologue, basically, and I put it up and I thought it's gonna be a pretty tough game. And then I gave my Xbox away and I never played it again, but then it went on sale on Steam for like five bucks, I think for both the Will of the Wisps and the Blind Forest. So, I bought it and I was really excited to play it because I think I mentioned it in the last couple episodes, I'm just excited to play video games again. So, I just slammed it down on the front of the backlog. Yeah, I, you know, talking about playing through the prologue because I played through that and I was like, man, this is great. We get a nice linear platforming experience and it doesn't seem like it's too terrible. And man, did it just rip me a new one after a bit. It is, oh, I don't wanna jump ahead too much to control, to like the, to slamming it. But it was not linear fully, it was like semi-linear. How would you describe that? Because it was, you were going up, down, left, right, you had to backtrack to a bunch of different places. It's its own genre kind of, they call it, it's a platforming, but it's like Metroidvania style. So, the whole concept, a lot of people really like this, is that you start off in a very small area and the whole world expands around you. But the reason it expands is because you're able to backtrack once you get new abilities and stuff. And I know in other games, but not so much this one, there's a lack of linearity to it where you can kind of just go and get an ability early on and then kind of like push forward. You know, you can kind of, but this one I guess has more linearity where you have to get this ability first and do this. But there's like speed runs of it where people have beat the game in like insanely fast. I watched a video of it after I finished the game of somebody and I actually learned a lot of how I could be playing the game differently just from watching that. And I felt like when I came back to the game and did some of the extras in it, I felt like I, like the game was on, I don't want to say it was on easy mode, but I just felt like I had learned so much stuff that I could do. But that's, the whole thing with the game, you kind of explore around and then you acquire either more health or more abilities, orbs and stuff like that and upgrade your character a little bit more. And you kind of get to pick how much of that you do, which will in turn make the game easier for you. But. Yeah, I think for the talent tree specifically, I think I ended up getting maybe five or six talent points, so I. Which, which talents did you take? Yeah, I went through the bottom most. And I can't remember what they were specifically, but I remember those were on the bottom row. I think that was based on damage, kind of. Possibly. Yeah, the one I initially went with was more about, you could gain health. Maybe that's why I had an easier experience, but it would be like you could gain health back when you saved. And you would get more, more life back from it. Well, let's talk about the saving on that, because how they introduced saving the game was irritating as all get out. No saving this game for you, huh? Man, I brought this up when we were talking about Wind Waker and Aladdin, right? Kind of going back to these old games, and this is not an old game. It's an old style. It's an old style, right? But going back to these old games, you had to kind of remember, hey, some games you just don't save, right? And that's one thing that I've really enjoyed in these newer gen, the things that we're playing today, in the 2000s and on, typically, you have automatic saves, or you can save when you want. And it really irked me that to save in this game, you either had to be in a very specific point, or you had to have enough of your mana, or whatever it was called, as a resource. And that was just a weird mechanic to me. Yeah, but I think that's a way to introduce some difficulty and try to, it's not like Limbo, where you die, and it's like there's almost no consequence. And I guess, to what you said, Metroidvania games. I don't know if I've, I can't think of any off the top of my head, I guess, other than. Metroid or Castlevania would be the top ones. Mega Man is often described as kind of a Metroidvania style. I never played those. So I think this was probably the first of this game for me. So it was a bit of a shock. The first time, when it's like, oh, hey, go ahead and long press this to save, and it took away my resources. I'm like, what in the hell is happening right now? Yeah, but I think that's kind of, for me, that's kind of the charm, because there's a little bit of resource management. And I think, man, this game, I think, goes pretty light on the difficulty that comes with these types of games, a lot of the time. So when we play Hollow Knight, that's gonna be a nightmare for you. And it's on my log, so, my backlog. I think, for me, what happened with the saving was I got to a point, I got the new ability, or whatever it was, or wherever I happened to be, but I got something that made me, I had to go back, and I had to go find where it was that I needed to go, because I unlocked, maybe double jump, or like the little burst that you get, like an energy burst, and I had to go unlock something to backtrack, and one, I couldn't remember where the hell I was going, and I found late that you had a map, which was fun. And I think I backtracked. Oh, I use that map a lot, yeah. I think I backtracked for like, it was probably like five minutes, but it felt like 10, 15 minutes, and I misunderstood a jump, and died, and lost all of that stuff, and I had no energy to save. And it was just, so it was just a constant, I'd port back in, get to the spot, and I kept dying in the same spot, but I had no ability to save any further, and it was just excruciating. Every once in a while, if I took, like, I think I became a little more aware of that early on, how you would just, you would need to do that. I would, if I would take too much damage trying to get something accomplished, I would just do the little Ori suicide to start back at that point, and get my health back, and then I could try it again. But I think, again, that kind of comes with a little bit more of experience with the game, and, you know, you just kind of learn. I'm sure a lot of other people did that, too, just, you know, to give yourself that little bit of an advantage, because I know myself, there's no way I was, if I lost more than 50% of my health getting in there, I'm probably gonna lose the rest of it trying to get out, so. Yeah. You know, I worry, especially with this next bit, I worry that I'm gonna come across as, what's the bad gamer term, a casual. You know, I always thought of myself as a gamer, and I still do, but I don't think I played as many games as I thought, because I would pick, like, one game, one big game every year, you know, and that would be my game, you know? Or we got stuck in the World of Warcraft back in the day, and, like, that was the game, right? I feel like playing games like that, where it's a long-term type of game, kind of diminished a lot of my, that's why I got a backlog, because you're playing, like, one game for ever and ever and ever, and you still have to go to work and do all this other stuff. But then, you've got income, so you're buying games. Right, and I think what ended up happening for me on this one, in this round of our game selection, which I wanna talk later about, or maybe a format change, we decided, at the same time, we're gonna play Ori, and we're gonna play Bioshock. Right. And then we'll, you know, when we get those done, then we'll record our episodes and be good to go. I'm really bad at switching between games. Yeah. Because I can't learn the controls of two games. Yeah, well, imagine if we happened to have two platformers, where they had an entire, like, the same type of game, but different. Yeah, so it's, we'll split it up, and we'll do one game at a time. Because I think, I feel like that'll also be better, too, because I can focus more on it. And, yeah. Poker shorts. Yeah. So, yeah, I played this, so, yeah, I played this between my main PC, and then when I travel, I bring a gaming laptop with me, and I'll bring a controller and all that. And, you know, going in different environments, different PCs, my bigger PC at home plays much better than my laptop does. So, it was a lot of switching back around and stuff like that. So, it was definitely a mixed experience. It's for cloud saving, though. Oh, man, yeah. You need a, you just need to get a Steam Deck, dude. You know, I might, hey, if we make it big with this podcast, or my 3D printing takes off like gangbusters, maybe. If you see one at an airport, maybe. If some kid goes to the bathroom and leaves a Steam Deck on the ground. Anyway, we don't promote thievery here. No, I, see, I, and again, I think I would enjoy this game. I just had a lot of outside factors that were messing with me on this one. Yeah. I don't want to bash it too much, right? I have to really. My favorite ability in the game was called bash. I absolutely am gonna play this again at some point. It just might be a while. So, yeah, other than that, I did want to call out the artwork and the graphics themselves were phenomenal. It was amazing. Yeah, and that's actually what made me want to play it. I didn't really think I was feeling, when I first downloaded it, the game just looked amazing to me. And when, back on the Xbox, I just wanted to play it for the visuals of it. And I thought it was gonna be real easy. Yeah. It was real good. You know, there were points, and this is me not playing a lot of these types of games, there were points that the graphics were, I don't know if it was that they were so good or if this had really anything to do with it. Maybe it was just the level design. There were some things that it was really hard to tell where the platforming assets that you interact with and the background that is just there to be background. Those bled together a lot in not like a bad way, but like in the background images and artwork versus the foreground stuff was just so well done that it was very seamless. And there were some spots of it where I thought there was a background piece that I couldn't interact with, but it was what I needed to interact with. One of the first times that there was like those spider creatures that you saw, and there was this big nest, I thought that was just a background piece. I felt like because it was moving, I kind of knew something had to happen with it, but that was the only thing I think in the entire game I had to look up what to do because I could not figure out that you needed to knock the spider, the big like egg nest down. I had to look it up because I was so lost about it. But yeah, I felt like it was obvious that you needed, it was very out of place. Like you knew you had to do something with it. Yeah, you knew you had to do something, but I didn't think you'd be able to, I thought it was gonna be like a thing that you did something else to get that interact with it. I didn't think it was something you could like climb on like you ended up doing. Well, you knock it down. Did you knock it down? Yeah. I think you hit it, but you have to like, if I remember correctly, you have to like interact with it to get on top of it and then go to the other side of it and then you get a chance to knock it down. There's a rock I think that it's attached to and you blow the rock up and it falls. Right. Yeah. So how far, I guess we'll kind of just briefly, I liked the prologue. The prologue is all I got through it, but I noticed when I was playing it, I paused it for a second and you have the option to skip it, which is cool because I know with this style of game, there's always a lot of people that do speed running. So it was kind of cool that you could just skip the prologue part of it. Oh, I did not know you could skip the prologue. Yeah, it's just, it's not really like a, it's not teaching you much about the game, I guess, but if you wanted to get through it again pretty quickly, you can just skip it, but it was so heartfelt. Why would you do that? But yeah, so there was a lot of that kind of interacting. And in other words, like another thing I would encounter a lot where you would kind of see things that you knew you could interact with. This is what I like about it, is there were areas you knew you could interact with, but you would try all your abilities and stuff and none of them would do anything. So you know you're going to come back to that eventually. That was kind of a driving factor. I definitely need to go back because I think there's a lot that I didn't get to experience. The main thing I got to experience over and over again was Jabba the Hutt making a voice acting appearance. Ooh. That was so distracting. I thought it was fine. I hated it. Why? I thought it was such an unnecessary thing, right? Maybe they speak a different, not everybody speaks American. Guardians of the Galaxy, all those beings should be speaking different languages, but they all happen to speak English, right? You don't find that weird? Yeah, no, it's just we take in storytelling when it's things that we may not understand, we get to hear it as if we could understand it. Right. And I just thought having this weird, it was like a comical to me, like interpretation of Jabba the Hutt giving some heartfelt speech about this orphaned creature, right? I just, I think, and then you had to listen to it and then read subtitles, which some people like subtitles, some people don't. I particularly don't. So I think it would have been much better if the voice actor, I don't know who it was, it sounded amazing. He had a great voice for it, great cadence, but if he just said the actual words that we could understand, I think it would have hit much better to me. It was Kevin Michael Richardson was the. Okay. That was the voice actor for Jabba the Hutt. Okay. You're killing me. According to Google. According to Google. So yeah, whoever did it for Ori the Black Forest, amazing voice, but I think if they just spoke, in our case, English, or if they did a foreign language. American. You know, that would have just been better because you wouldn't have had to fill the screen up with the lettering and all that. I don't mind that. Yeah, I think it would have been better if it was just like English. Maybe I have, I'm practically deaf, I think, so I like subtitles and stuff in a game. It's the first thing I do, man. I went on, even on Bioshock. Even on Bioshock, I just immediately go in and I turn the subtitles on because I want to be able to really understand what's being said. So maybe that's why it didn't bother me, but I also feel like it just kind of flushes out the game a little bit more, having, but I don't know. To me, that seems like a very strange thing to be upset about. I wouldn't say I'm upset about it. We're having a funeral for your emotions. I didn't experience enough of the game but that was one thing that I encountered like three or four times and it was, I wouldn't say jarring, but it was definitely. It was definitely the worst thing that ever happened to you. Yeah, I don't know how to articulate it exactly, but I just, I think it just was a. You're not a fan. I wasn't a fan. The sound quality was great on all of it. It sounded nice, but it was just, I think it would have been better if it was a language that existed for us to understand. Okay, well that's, yeah. It wouldn't have bothered me if they did that, but it didn't bother me how it was either. I'm very particular. Okay, yeah. Dude, I'm so particular about certain things in games, so I'm not even gonna give you any crap about it. You know, I think in a similar vein, my wife has not watched certain critically acclaimed shows because of like an accent that the main actor would have. Is that agoraphobic? I don't know if there's a name for it, but it was like, oh, that actor, they're putting on too weird of like a country drawl or something, and it just sounds artificial. She just won't watch the show, because it sounds weird, you know? So I think it's, I don't think I'm fully allowed in this, but I don't think it took enough away from the game. I think the game was so good. It was just a little weird, quirky thing. Yeah, it didn't bother me much at all, but that's okay. My notes are coming to a close here, so I'm worried that I didn't get enough, so you're gonna be really telling me a lot about this now. I'm gonna, yeah, so. Buffer. Did you encounter, there was an area where it was like very, very dark in it. Did you end up in that area at all? I made it through. I feel like you would know it if you saw it. I got to a point where I was going to get, I think, a wisp or something, like with the things you're like collecting or whatnot, and this creature, this like, I love that guy. Ideal creature, he like stole it, and I started chasing him. Yeah, I like that character. I think he kind of almost seems like a monkey or something to me. Yeah, so I think I finally got to him and defeated him, and that's about where I stopped. Did you, well, you don't defeat him. Maybe, yeah, then maybe I didn't do it. I thought I was chasing him, and then I encountered something that was boss-ish, maybe. Yeah, boss-adjacent. Yeah, and I think that's about where I stopped, so. Do you care if I give you like a little bit of spoilers on how he might come back to the game? Okay, so that guy, there's like a little bit of a hint of what's gonna happen, but that guy tries to run, and like a big rock falls on top of him, and Ori, it's like a small cut scene within the game. Ori actually pulls the rock off of him, and he just kind of stops and then leaves, but it kind of tells you in the story like that he changed that day because of Ori's kindness that he's shown. So you kind of get this little sense that maybe like the bad things in the forest can kind of be coerced into being friendly. Right. Because Ori's a peaceful creature, kind of. Is Ori, because I don't think I got far enough into the story, is Ori like a spirit or like an actual corporeal being? Oh my God, I remember kind of reading this about it because I kind of, what is Ori? He's adorable. I think he's like an embodiment of the tree or something. He's the child of the, am I mixing up multiple games here? I think he's like an embodiment of the spirit of the tree or something like that, or the tree's voice, maybe. Gotcha, gotcha. We'll see what, yeah. In the comments, tell us if we're correct or not. Yeah, just go ahead and look. We play these games, do no research outside of what we played, and try to come up with things to talk about. Yeah, go ahead and just ruin my day, dump it on me here. There was, I really do want to talk about this because this was like, I got, I think you and I have a different, a very different feeling of getting from this game. There was an area that it was super dark and there were, I don't think I should have been there yet. I think it was, I was there a little bit prematurely, like based on how much health my character had and everything, but the only reason you can see where you're supposed to go is because there's enemies inside of the cave that are moving, and you can see that where they're at is solid ground because you know that the enemies don't go on the spikes and they'll die if they do. So I would jump to those areas and kill the enemy and move through it, and then you grab this ball of light that's heavy, like it actually changes the physics of your character a little bit. So then all of your jumps are harder to make and this light shows platforms that are only there when you're holding the light, and there's this part, it's kind of hard to describe it, but there's a part where you're creating these platforms by holding this light and they're only near you when they're near the light ball, and then there's also these things that it erases, like platforms it'll erase. Well, then there's one of these giant lasers that is hitting a platform, so if you approach the platform with the ball of light, it deletes the platform above you and the laser cuts off your path, so you know you need to set the ball of light down, and then jump to the next area and then go progress, but when you put the ball of light down, Ori's physics change again, and you've been playing for a pretty good amount of time with these heavy-weighted physics, so then I set the ball of light down and I go to make that jump and I overshoot it like crazy and die, and it happened so many times, even when I was aware of it, I just wasn't mentally and physically compensating for that anymore, and when I did finish that part, it felt really good, and I think that's what I like about these games, and maybe you have less patience with it, but I'm looking for that pat on the back from the game for beating it, you know? I, you know, either we had talked about this, because we'll chat about the games a little bit between us, either you had brought this up before, or I did get to that little ball of light but didn't go any further than that, and that sounds familiar, but I don't remember it at all. I could see you getting there and just being like, nope! You know? That's okay, it's not, it was my backlog in my game, not yours, you know? I just wanted a friend to play it with, that's all. Did you, I don't, one thing I noticed through the whole game in general is that the more you explore, the stronger you get, because you'll gain, there's like levels, kind of like an experience system by beating enemies, so the game would get a little bit easier if you're having a difficult time, you could get more health. I noticed a lot of the game's difficulty felt more front-loaded, as far as the things you experienced were very much like in the front of the game, whereas near the end it became about the difficulty of platforming. You know, like, there were times where I would save the game just to help replenish my health, because I think you would gain two health dots if you saved with the build that I went. So, that means the energy became almost a non-issue eventually. And then, near the end of the game, I didn't find myself dying because I was taking damage from enemies and stuff like that, because you do so much damage later on. I was dying because you would hit areas where it was basically only platforming damage that I was taking damage from. And then there's a couple areas where the game is like, it's the old, like the levels pushing you along thing. I think of like Mario was one of the first games I ever played where the level is moving and you just have to traverse it at the speed that the game is telling you to. There's probably a term for that, but those levels were tough. And I mean tough. Yeah, there was one thing in particular, the Ginso tree. That's the first main objective that you're trying to do is go to this tree and restore water for the whole area. Do you recall that was like what they told you to do? Yeah, vaguely, yeah. Okay, so here's some little spoiler for you. You restore the light to this tree via some platforming. You get this ability called Bash, which was my favorite ability. What it does is you kind of latch onto an enemy or an orb, and then you point what direction you want to go and Ori just flies in that direction. So when you restore water to the tree, the water is going to kill you and it just comes up the tree super fast. And you have to traverse the tree with spikes everywhere and water coming up. And if you miss like even one orb, you're dead. Oh, wow. And it was tough, man. I want to say, I think I died 40 to 60 times on it. I guess we would average that at 50, but I died a lot and it felt really good to get past it. I have a video of it if you want to watch it like at another point, I'm just putting it in the Discord. I think this is like a person doing it flawlessly. So it's not going to be nearly the struggle that I went through. But when you look at the comments of that video, like people are like saying like, you made it look easy. I died so many times here. People are saying this is when they quit the game because it was just like, it's a shame that this was so difficult because this is what made me quit. And this wasn't even that tough compared to like the very last part of the game for me. But it was cool. It just felt really good to be able to beat that section. And that's when I knew like no matter what I was going to hunt or like just finish the game because it was just so rewarding, I guess. Are you watching it or? No, I'm not watching it yet. But I'm just kind of listening to your description of it. I was having trouble. I was, I had just gotten my double jump and I had already gotten back a little bit. So I'd had my double jump for maybe a couple hours. No, I didn't play for a couple hours. It felt like hours. I probably had almost a couple of game play. I probably had it for maybe 20 minutes. And I'm curious if the double jump ever got better through like talents or whatever, because it was actually a triple jump eventually. It wasn't enough. Like I was in a pit and I had to like hit the wall, bounce, hit the wall, double bounce at the wall and navigate through some spikes just to get back to where I could like progress. Cause I was in a pit, right? Yeah. And I could not get out. Like I couldn't figure out how to like, it was just, I couldn't time it right or something. And I was just having trouble with just your basic like double jump of doing like the one wall, like wall jumping. There's a couple of things in the game. There's a, you eventually can get a triple jump, which I think you can beat the game without even getting triple jump. But there is the ability that's in the ability tree that I went through first. There's also a dash in midair you can get, which I found really helpful, where you basically, I guess in Ori's thing, it's like eight body lengths of Ori forward in midair. You can also do that only in the definitive edition. You can do that on the ground. Right. So it kind of speeds up the pace of the game. And then eventually you get a feather, which you use as a slow fall ability, which helps again because it gives you, oh, and there's a way, there's like a wall climb thing where your character doesn't have to double, like wall jump climb over and over again. You can actually like cling to the wall. And that's what I mean, how the game gets a lot easier, the more stuff you unlock as you unlock it, because you just, you become much more equipped to traverse the entire game successfully. I probably heard like a third of that. I'm watching that video you just posted. It's crazy. I'm, my heart is pounding right now just watching it. I wouldn't ever have done this. And I, yeah, and I, yeah, I know it was tough. I swear, I died probably. Honestly, I mean, and kids now, for this comment, kids nowadays are crazy. I thought this game was for kids. My son couldn't do that. It does have like a very cutesy little like look to it. That's rough. Yes. Holy Lord, dude. And to me that wasn't even the final platforming boss, if you, I don't know, it's not really a boss fight, but the final boss of the game was more difficult for me than this part. But I think this part is more difficult for most people. This guy is also getting the orbs. I skipped some of those orbs that he got in the little video you're watching. Oh my goodness, that's wild. I like that ability a lot though. And I didn't realize through it, like when I played, I guess you can use that ability on anything. So if there's an enemy, you, like on the speed run, this guy on a speed run is using it on every single enemy he encounters and he just flies through the game. It's crazy. But I'll close out of that. That moment of that tree was when I switched. Traditionally, I guess in most platformers, you want to use a D-pad. At least that's what all the nerds do. And that's what I hear on the internet. And that's what I hear and feel. But I had to switch to the control stick for that part, which was cool because I feel like that's what made it feel like a modern platformer to me. Yeah. Switching, because if you think about aiming that arrow that shows up on the screen, you're not going to be able to really do that accurate, as in my opinion, I couldn't aim it accurately with a D-pad. Because the control stick has a lot more, it just fits that a little bit better. I thought that was kind of neat because they found a way to make it, like it was an Xbox controller game. So they, you know, it just, I thought it was neat. Yeah, I used the joysticks for all of my playthrough. Yeah, yeah. And I guess you probably could have because the game had, it had really tight controls. I saw you put the controls were responsive. Very, yeah. Yeah, and they better be, because it's the only platformer I can think of that like I should like, because like the new Donkey Kong games have terribly, like just the controls feel slimy. But you want, I want tight controls in a game. I want it to feel like what I'm doing is important, not just watching a monkey roll. So what else is left here? Yeah, I'll go over a few things. I died 458 times when I played through the game and it took me 12 hours to beat it. And then I played for about another two hours. It's different from what it said on my Steam, but my thing shows that I played for almost 14 hours total. That's because I went back and I got like more of the light extra health and the abilities and maxed out all three parts of the skill tree. Oh wow. So yeah, I don't know. There was also like random and it kind of shocked me when it happened, but there was, I heard the Wilhelm scream. I killed an enemy, I knocked it off a cliff and it's just like, I don't want to do my impersonation of it, but. That's so good. You know, there's- It was just cool because it was very random, you know? Yeah. You know, there's apparently somewhere on the internet, the person that does the Wilhelm scream, there's alternatives to it. Like the- Oh really? Like when whoever did it, the guy that was in the booth did a couple of them, but the one we all know is the one they chose for whatever movie or thing it was and that's the one that just stuck or, you know, stuck. But there was apparently like four or five other ones that are floating around there. I know there's a Howie scream, which is like extremely visceral. I've heard it in a couple other things, but it's like, it sounds like it comes from deeper. So good. And then I guess we could kind of touch on the ending a little bit if you're okay with that. Yeah, initially I was gonna say at the beginning and we didn't, I was like, oh, there probably aren't too many spoilers, but I'm thinking I might've been a little wrong with that, but I don't think it'll be that bad. I think this game, to me, just from the little I've watched online and hearing you discuss it, I think the playing of the game is the biggest thing, not necessarily the story. It's the experience, yeah, sure. The story I think is kind of touching to some, like a lot of people really did like the story. I had to look up a little bit about it because I didn't fully grasp it, but I guess according to Reddit, that was a common thing that people had. I had part of the ending spoiled for me a little bit. There was the Steam sale that I bought it on, I got both editions of the game. So I got the definitive and the regular, and then I also got Wheel of the Wisps packaged in with it. Wheel of the Wisps has Ori on the, like in the banner on Steam, it has Ori and then it has an owl. The enemy of the game is an owl. So I was thinking like, okay, obviously Ori and the owl are gonna end up becoming friends or something. And then when the little guy, like the little monkey guy, Gumo or Gummo, I can't remember how you say it, when that guy becomes friendly, that's when I knew, I was like, okay, obviously the owl is gonna kinda come around to being friends. So kinda had that spoiled for me a little bit. It's not exactly that, that's not necessarily the exact ending, but that kinda, it was kinda funny to me cause it was like probably very unintentional, but it's a pretty big thing, I think, that they maybe didn't consider. Well, you know, I think when they're, the game's already almost 10 years old. Come on, man. It's just, yeah, it has that feel. Yeah, it's true. Yeah, I think, and when did Wheel of the Wisps come out? It was, um. This ain't that game, dude, it ain't that podcast. I know, but I'm just curious, just to put it in context, they were sent out five years apart, so I mean. Yeah, you had time. At some point, you gotta be like, hey, spoilers, at what point can, is it socially acceptable to say you can't really worry about spoilers, you know? Well, people still get mad about like if you spoil Harry Potter or something, so. That's very true. Which we're not gonna get into. The last part of the game, you're being chased by that owl. Oh. The big daddy owl, mommy owl, whatever. Right. And that was, I think I died a hundred times. That added like a hundred deaths to my death count. I was also cooking dinner, and in between checking temperatures on food and stuff like that, I was playing. So I think I was like sort of distracted, a little bit sweaty. I was actually grilling food. Oh, good Lord. So yeah, it was very intense for me. But it was cool because it was like the ultimate test of like being able to use every single skill, and I really thought it was like, it was a lot of fun. It was very tough. And I kept getting right at the end, and I knew like if I didn't time it perfectly, I was gonna like never gonna finish it. And I think the very last like three or four jumps or platforming skill tests, I think I died on that part alone like 20 times, just because it was that part kept tripping me up. And then you could kind of do the trial by death thing and figure out like you got to that next step, now you know what's coming and you have to kind of try to remember it. It was good. When I finished it, I looked up like what the heck the story was about because it didn't really make a lot of sense to me. Like why did any of this even happen? So I put like just quick notes in it. I know you didn't finish it, but maybe somebody didn't understand it either, but they didn't care enough to look it up. Ori gets lost during a storm. The light tree calls out to Ori, and I guess this understood that because owls are nocturnal. The light tree calling out to Ori is what kind of like what killed most of the baby owls. And that's why the mom went on a rampage and took the light away because she was trying to protect her baby owl. So then at the end of the game, she sacrifices herself to put the light back, kills herself in the process, and Ori becomes like friends with the baby owl. Oh, okay. So that's why, it's not exactly that, but like the next game isn't the mommy owl or whatever, but it's cool because that was what rounded it out. And I was like, oh, wow, the story actually was pretty good, but maybe if they had voice actors, I would have known that, right? Yeah, maybe. That was it. If it wasn't Java that was giving you his thoughts on it. Yeah, yeah. I don't speak whatever Java does. There's a language, right? I'm pretty sure. I was gonna look up more about it for my little tidbit on it and life. Yeah, that's all right. Did you like it at all? Would you play it again? If you got a new controller? Oh, yeah. And for that real quick, when I travel, I had this like 10 year old controller. It looks like an Xbox controller, but it's some third party. And I hadn't, before we started the podcast, I hadn't used it in probably, my son's seven, and I got it before he was born. So I haven't used this in like seven plus years. Yeah. And. Out of this game broke your controller, man. In the hotel, I'm using the A key for a jump or something and it just starts sticking. So it like, I pressed it in and it got stuck there for like three seconds. So it was rough. So I threw it in the trash. Yeah, I think I would play it again. I think just life really kicked my butt on this one. So. It's okay. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and that's something I wanted to say for anybody listening. Like I play games to like, you know, get out of real life, right? You use that as an escape or whatever you wanna do. But I wanted it to be fun and the fact that me trying to play this for the podcast and also to have fun, the act of attempting to do that was making all the other life stuff worse. Right. So it was just, it was bad. It was like, oh, I have to. You should have pawned your kids off on somebody for a minute, man. You know, I'm going through my list of like to do things, ranging from real serious things to like, you know, changing out the laundry and doing dishes, like all that little stuff, right? And in the back of my mind, I'm like, oh yeah, shit, I also have to play, I gotta go play a game so then we can talk about it. And if it's somewhat genuine and I'm sitting there stressing out. I'm having such a good time that I'm barbecuing while I'm playing it. And I'm telling, I'm trying to, I'm excited to talk to you about it and it's looming over your shoulder like. Oh man. Like. So yeah, I was just a little PSA for people. Don't, games are meant to be fun. If you're stressing out over it, it'll be there when you get back. Just put the controller down. Backlog. Backlog's gonna be there. Just let it sit. It's come off of your backlog, hasn't come off of mine. I'll get to it eventually. If you do play it again, let me know because I would like to try it and maybe play it in a different way or something. And you know, I'm seeing, I've got Ori and, or the first one and I've also got Will of the Wisps. I'm not gonna fully write it off. I'd like to play the other one as well. So. Yeah. I would say next time if you play it, next time maybe try to get more health a little earlier on. Be in a good, I think, like a good place to play it and put the time in it too because I feel like this is kind of one of those games that if you even take like a little bit of time away from it, you kind of forget what abilities you have and how to use them properly and you just get more and more as the game goes on. So I feel like it's better to play it a little bit more consecutively. It's a short game, so. Yeah, definitely. I think this also kind of can lead into, this can also lead into our little discussion offline about the issues I was having specifically about trying to juggle two games as well as life, right? So what we've been doing historically is at the end of every other episode, we'll say what games each of us are bringing in and then we'll set those aside. So now we've got two games on our plate to play through and I think what we're gonna do is break that up and we're still gonna alternate because you bring one to the table, I bring one to the table. And I think we need to do that. And I got paralysis hard on that. Yeah, I'm real bad at switching games. Yeah. When you put 14 hours into Ori and then Bioshock is another, it's over 10 at least. That's a lot to cram in and try and do them both and then by the time we get to our recording, you played Ori a month ago. I last put my controller down seven days ago. So very different levels of discussion there. So I think moving forward, you and I may discuss what we might bring up but I don't wanna make it too hard of a line because we've already talked about our one after Bioshock and we've already got it downloaded, you've already got it put on your, you've already put a couple of minutes into it. So I- I put two hours into the first cut scene, yeah. I don't want to, so I wanna try and give us a little restraint, you and I, some self-restraint to wait long enough to say the next game because we're both gonna get into it and I don't want us to get stressed out, especially me, I don't wanna get stressed out on it. Yeah, man, this isn't supposed to, yeah, dude, I'm not, I ain't playing video games. I don't play Dark Souls, okay? I'm not trying to ruin my life for a video game. And that was my next game, no. God, dude. All right. No, so, no, I think, I think, yeah, I think with that, we can go ahead and say our next game is still gonna be Bioshock. That was the one that I brought, so that'll be our next one. And then at the end of our Bioshock episode, we will announce our next game. And then at the end of that one, we'll just do one at a time. We're still gonna have the release schedule of every other week, but we'll just be releasing one announced game at a time. Yeah, and I think that'll be easier for other people to keep up to if anyone wants to try to play along and then, you know, kind of review the podcast with us. And, you know, I think it'll be a little bit easier. I feel like that's how most formats are and we're just figuring things out still. So, yeah, I think that kind of concludes the discussion of already. Did you have anything else you wanted to add about it? No, I don't think so. I think it was a good game. I think I've had enough. I've had enough, but it wasn't about the game. It was just about the real life thing. So I think the game is good. I think you've got to go try it. If you can handle those, it's a tough platformer. It's hard, but if you can get past that and you like that challenge, I think it's worth it. Okay, well, yeah, I liked it. So I'll try to keep it in mind that it was more difficult. If there's another one that I try to pick in the future, maybe I'll put it on my back pocket backlog that we want. No, but this is something else too. And I think I mentioned that one of the other episodes, you know, this was the game that you brought forth. It wasn't necessarily on my list. I think it was. I don't know if I officially put it on there, but you got your experience out of it. I got my experience out of it. And it's fine if you and I both played the Wind Waker game and we got enough out of it. We didn't finish it, but we had enough. I got too much out of that game. And that's valid. So I don't think, you know, I don't think you have to finish every game. If it's on your backlog and you've attempted it and it wasn't for you or it was for you, that both are valid. It's really all about, I mean, dude, you didn't like the game that much. You had a difficult time with it, but wasn't this discussion just like, you can't regret it? Oh, yeah, the discussion was great. I do like talking about them. You know, I had a little bit less to say because my experience was like a 10th of yours. It was still fun to talk about it, definitely. Yeah, thanks for listening to me ramble for the last 90 minutes. Yeah, I think that's it. Thanks everybody. Thanks so much for listening. That wraps up our discussion for Ori and the Blind Forest, the definitive edition. If you enjoyed this episode, please let us know with a thumbs up, a comment or sharing with your friends and family. If you're able to do so, play along with us next time when we play Bioshock. We'll keep posting upcoming games to our socials and what games are up next at the end of each episode. This has been 321 Backlog by Alec L. and James T. Our show music is Lipton, by Amy Waters. You can find this song and more of their work at amywaters.bandcamp.com. You can connect with us on any of our social media pages and by sending us an email at 321backlogatgmail.com. Until next time. Until next time. Until next time. Until next time.
