Ori Definitive Edition: Interview with Dan Smith

Ori Definitive Edition: Interview with Dan Smith

At the Microsoft Spring Showcase in February 2016 I had the pleasure of chatting with Dan Smith from Microsoft and demoing the new content in Ori and the Blind Forest Definitive Edition.

Brandon Stork: This is Dan Smith with Ori and the Blind Forest Definitive Edition, how are you doing?

Dan Smith: Very good, I’m the Microsoft producer for Ori and the Blind Forest. Essentially what we’ve got here to show today is Ori and the Blind Forest Definitive Edition, and mainly we are celebrating the journey of Ori and the tremendous success that It had in terms of awards. So the idea here is that we are celebrating everything that’s great with Ori and the Blind Forest but we are adding in new features and content for players who are big fans. So essentially let me tell you about everything that’s new in the game.

Brandon Stork: Absolutely!

Dan Smith: I think the biggest point is that there is an entirely playable new area; this playable new area called “Black Root Burrow” features new gameplay mechanics, so it is an important thing that our dungeons kind of exercise these fresh mechanics, the new Black Root Burrow area has this great light mechanic where you are carrying a light orb and you are illuminating platforms and doors that you can step through or not step through depending on if you are holding this orb, this new area also has quite a bit of a new story treatment so you explore the past of Naru, which is the mother figure of the game and you explore her background, which is great. We also have new tracks written by Gareth Coker and performed by the same Nashville orchestra so lots of great music in the game, which is great.

We are also promoting 2 new skills, there is dash ability and a light burst ability which is more or less a grenade; the dash will be mapped to the shoulder button, you can have this kind of quick rapid dashes and there are new abilities in the ability tree that when you unlock them they promote an enhanced dash, air dash is one of them, and actually having dash become an attack which utilizes your energy. Light burst is my personal favorite, so it’s a grenade ability, there’s two ways to really use it, you can hold down the light burst button which is also the other shoulder button for very fine tune shots, think of it as this very precise golf shot. You get a nice visual display of an arc where you can put a light burst grenade exactly where you want.

The other is that if you tap the button, you’ll just kind of fling out a grenade and this is really good for extremely difficult busy rooms with a lot of enemies, you know one thing with Ori is his agility, I think everybody appreciates how agile he is and how much fun he is to play and control. utilizing lightburst in those scenarios, it’s more of a scenario when you are jumping into a busy room in the middle of the air, you are flinging grenades that auto target the closest enemy so again it’s just a great skill, a really fun skill to use.

Another thing that we added to the game is difficulty settings, so when you pick a new save, you’ll be able to actually select Easy, Normal, Hard and for those who are just diehard hardcore Ori fans, there’s a one life mode now which is great. The other thing is that you will be able to utilize teleporters through the spirit wells, everywhere where you find a primary spirit well, a primary save point, you’ll be able to use teleportation to zip around which is quite cool; we’re expanding the theater section of the game so there is quite a bit of new content in there, lots of concept videos, trailers that we’ve released before, very excited about that, lots of new hidden areas. So you know the hidden areas where you approach their mask and become unmasked? Lots of new areas in that regard and then we are also featuring cross save capability with Xbox One and Windows 10 so you’ll be able to have your saves in both places

Brandon Stork: So Ori and The Blind Forest Definitive Edition will be coming to Xbox One and Windows 10 on which date?

Dan Smith: March 11

Brandon Stork: March 11, and it will also be available on Steam as an upgrade to the base game?

Dan Smith: Correct!

Brandon Stork: Very cool, well thank you very much Dan, I think that’s all as much as I had!

Dan Smith: Awesome!

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