Ori, and how games can really make you feel things, man.

Full credit to MOON STUDIOS for the Ori series and Full credit to Arsi Patala/New Blood Interactive for Ultrakill.

**Written and visual spoiler warning ahead for the first ten minutes and potentially a few major plot events of Ori and the Blind Forest.

In this blog post I look at one of my favourite story-based games and use it to explore how games generate emotion. 

 

What is Ori and the Blind Forest? 

 

ORI is a criminally underrated duology of games that I feel lots more people should play, despite the game being out of the limelight now. These two games offer an experience unlike many others I have played, and I could go so far as to call them masterpieces.

 

First Ten Minutes of Ori and the Blind Forest

 

 

 

The first game, Ori and the Blind Forest, first introduces us to our protagonist, Ori, a small light spirit fallen from a grand tree in the middle of the game's world, Nibel. The opening movie consists of the inciting events of the story, Ori being cast from the tree after a great storm tore him from it. In the midst of the opening movie, an unidentified voice talks in a mysterious language subtitled on the screen, about how they will never forget how Ori was taken from them in the midst of the storm.

 

 This voice is either inferred or later revealled to the player to be the great tree itself, Ori's father. Ori is then found during the storm and nursed back to health, taken care of by a kind creature named Naru, who acts as a sort of mother to Ori.

 

 Immediately during the inciting incident, we are told the story of a father tree being once desperate upon the loss of a son. The game makes us care about these characters due to their expressive and lively animation, their appearance and the role they take in the story. In the first two or so minutes, we've been given the characters, our reason to care, our sympathies and our expectations for the future.
Only for them to be shattered.

The Land of Nibel was once lush and vast, with fruit in every tree and life in every crag. However, after the introduction, things slowly start to get darker.

Ori awakens, running to the right and joining Naru in foraging, shaking trees for fruit, and strengthening a bond by building a bridge over a river, all the while bright colour palletes and lively music plays in the background. 

 

Once the sun sets and after the bridge is complete, Ori and Naru eat the fruit they've picked from the other side of the lake, happy with the rewards of their work. Something happens to the left of the screen, a flash of light as a purpleish-blue light begins to outshine the moonlight. However, this is merely foreshadowing for the events to come. 

 

As Ori ventures further to the left, the tree explains how, on that fateful night, when he lit the skies ablaze, he called out to Ori. Once the tree comes back into view in front of the entrance we first guided Ori out of, the tree initiates the event that blinds the forest, torching everything with divine light as Naru and Ori hide in their home. A short sped up time segment shows us how Ori fell asleep after the burst of light in Naru's arms, and Naru goes to investigate the outside after such a strange event.

 

This event is what triggers one of the first emotional gutpunches of the story. The tree in the distance seems to have scorched its own leaves off, leaving it a twisted mess of snaking branches. Notably, the light in the middle is absent. 

 

The trees now seem to be dying, as does everything. Nibel has begun to die, and for what purpose we have absolutely no idea about. These questions leave us with drive to continue, which leaves us privy to the gutpunch as described above.

Naru, unable to find food and after injuring herself by way of a fall, begins to visibly weaken. Naru returns to the cave, and wakes up Ori by taking the one fruit she found and placing it before him, laying down against the cave wall, evidently weak.

 

Ori investigates as well, the sky now red, appearing to understand Naru's situation and finding fruit in a shielded tree. As we walk Ori back, flashbacks of Naru and Ori's time together play in what appears to be Ori's mind, making us further worry. But by the time Ori brings the fruit back, Naru has already starved. We are assaulted by this sudden occurance, a scene that was once so happy a minute or two ago has now become a tragic death of a character we liked so much for her unconditional kindness and tenderness. With the forest's weakening, good seems to as well.

 

Ori leaves the cave, later sitting on a ledge that Naru did at the start. Naru's death is confirmed by the tree's narration, stating Ori as 'An orphan once more'. Ori then feebly makes his way down the ledge and into the growth, later faltering. Flowers grow around him as he draws his last breath, and with these flowers, an the ablity to sense Ori again, the tree musters the last of its strength to bring Ori back from the dead.

Already, in the introductory moments of the game, we've been hit with a curveball, connections, emotional moments and several questions that drives our curiosity to continue into this well written, almost hand-painted-looking world.

Why have I told you so much about a game you will probably never play? Look at HOW I've described it. By looking at and building a backstory you have become familiar with it, and perhaps are already becoming fond of the character. This context will be useful in understanding the next topic:

How is Emotion Generated in Ori and the Blind Forest?

The developers of Ori and the Blind Forest, Moon Studios, did an impeccable job of setting themes in this game, but also pulling on the heart strings of the invested players. What they particularly set up in this scene was the so called 'weakness scene' which they pull off very well every time it occurs. In this state, the viewer feels sympathy and hope for their player character when they evidently become weak during a story segment, moving slower than normal or even at a crawl. 

This sort of scene happens a small sprinkle of times throughout both games, and every time they occur they are very potent, and in especially key moments makes us cheer and hope that Ori will be okay. The evident frailty of Ori as a character is apparent as well, taking only a few hits by any enemy at the beginning to kill him outright.

Another thing that Moon Studios absolutely excells at is environmental and auditory storytelling. Without a single word of dialogue being spoken by either Ori or Naru, our two main characters in these opening ten minutes, we are already fully aware of the story Moon is trying to tell us. Arguably, the lack of spoken ingame dialogue in the opening (not including the great tree speaking to us directly) enhances the story, as it is clear that they are not human but have human qualities that make us empathise with these proto-human characters. They seem alien to us in a way, an example of how Ori is a humanless Xenofiction. This story takes place through the eyes of characters that don't even know humans exist, if they even do in this universe. This makes it all the more intriguing, peering into a world that isn't our own, from a perspective and body that is not our own, from a creature that doesn't work like us.

This generates curiosity, another emotion Moon excels at making us feel. They give us questions like 'why was the sky set ablaze by the great tree?', 'why was Ori so weak after the darkness took over and the tree faded?', and other questions relating to the world, as well as the stunning artwork, charges curiosity and excitement for exploring the strange land of Nibel further to learn its secrets.

How Do Other Games Generate Emotion?

Other games generate emotions similarly to Ori, but I feel personally as if Ori's effect on the players is amazing at what it does. I haven't played a single other game that has made me feel more than Ori has in its respective aspects.

Other games still do generate some amazing emotions, the above is just my opinion. The shock and awe moments of seemingly innocent games packing a huge horror undertone, grand accomplishments and heroism of characters despite their repeated failings, twists involving character death that shocks the viewer, and many other things have been done amazingly in many games. A game named Ultrakill generates adrenaline and urgency using fast-paced, heavy music and blisteringly fast gameplay, DOOM 2016 makes you feel like an immovable god that can destroy leigons of demons, Undertale makes you feel either joy and satisfaction or fear and dissatisfaction depending on which route you take through the game... The examples are endless. Games are a form of escapism and a form of art, and some of these individuals or teams do it damn well.

 

Conclusion 

Clearly I am a fan of Ori, for many reasons (there'll be a different blog post about the second game at a later date). The reason I chose Ori as a great example of how games generate emotion is because it was familliar to me personally, and was a breathtaking experience when I first completed the games.  

This is just one example of how a game can be so much more than a mere leisure experience. Games can be a form of escapism or just a medium for an artist to tell a compelling story. Hopefully, I have illustrated how games like the Ori series can really make you feel things, man.