Earlier this month we sat down with Senior Producer at Xbox Game Studios, Daniel Smith, to discuss Ori and the Will of the Wisps, the sequel to Moon Studio’s critically acclaimed precision platformer, Ori and the Blind Forest.
Though Smith had a lot to say about the upcoming release and shared with us a lot of exciting news about the Will of the Wisps, one of the most impressive revelations of the meeting was the sheer size of the game. According to Xbox telemetry, Ori and the Blind Forest took players anywhere between 8 and 20 hours to complete, due to its open-world nature. When asked how long we should expect Will of the Wisps to complete, Smith assured us that it very depends on the player’s individual playstyle but that the game itself is at least three times bigger than its predecessor and Smith isn’t just talking about the size of the map.
“I can tell you for a fact that Will of the Wisps is three times the size, scope and scale of Ori and the Blind Forest. We can open up the Unity editor and fit the entirety of the Blind Forest map in just a little section of the whole world. I say scope and scale because it’s not just the fact that the map is bigger, it’s like the shards, the combat, the Spirit Trials. We’re just offering people so much more content. That’s in every regard. Even in the music; there’s just a mountain more of music in the game,” said Smith.
As for whether this sequel represents the end of Ori’s journey, Smith couldn’t explicitly tell us about any plans for additional installments in the future but reiterated the importance of leaving room for the possibility.
“I think in any game where we feel like there may be success, it’s important to leave the door cracked with the end. So, whether there was going to be a full on plan to do a sequel or not- and I’ve worked with Moon for eight years, so towards the end of the project we were like, ‘we need to keep going with this intellectual property’ – but that said, I think any game, when you feel like there’s a chance, you’ve got to leave a little bread crumb so yeah – and I’m so glad it worked out because obviously this game just picks up right where that one left off.” said Smith.
Ori and the Will of the Wisps is an Xbox Play Anywhere title that launches on Xbox One and Steam on March 11, 2020. It will also launch on Xbox Game Pass on day one for subscribers and is available to pre-install now.
